Insight to the Industry, Part 1

Eric Christ, CEO of PracticeAdmin, was invited to come speak on Atlanta’s Midtown Business Radio show, hosted by C.W. Hall. Christ offered some insight about PracticeAdmin software, services, along with information about the future of the medical billing industry. CW Hall: Good afternoon everyone this is CW Hall your host on the Midtown business radio show. I’d like to introduce our listeners to Eric Christ the Chief executive officer at PracticeAdmin. Welcome. Eric Christ: Thank you CW. CWH: PracticeAdmin: you’re a group that works with physician practices or medical entities that are looking for some leadership in terms of operating efficiency and potential revenue cycle management. Those types of services? EC: That’s right. We provide software-as-a-service, hosted software solutions, as well as back-end services to help medical practices and third party medical billing companies do their revenue cycle management. So, yes the back office side of the practice. I know you’ve been in healthcare CW. Have you ever looked at a claim, and what goes into creating a claim get paid by the insurance company? CW: Yes… EC: It is not an easy process! CW: And it’s only getting more and more difficult, as my colleague Dr. Schwegman, who’s sitting in off the mic today, can certainly attest to the same thing. It’s extremely challenging for these providers. They’re in the business of healthcare. So on one hand they’re there to help the health outcomes of our patients and the community, but then then the other side they’ve got a house and they’ve got a kid, and they’ve got bills to pay. So it’s a business. That side of things is extremely complicated, and annually, literally, it gets more and more involved and complicated. So a group like yours can really come in and take some of the headaches out. EC: Sure. All doctors went to medical school, but not many of them went to business school. So particularly when they are on a solo or small practice, they’re trying to do two things at once; they have to practice medicine, but they also have a business to run. That can be a challenge just because they don’t have necessarily the aptitude to be a business person as well as delivering medicine. But also [there is] complexity associated with our healthcare payment model today, where you have a mixed model of commercial insurance but also Medicare/Medicaid, and all of those entities have rules and regulations. There are some standards, in terms of the format of the claim form (it’s pretty much standardized both on paper and electronic), and the code sets which you use to mark the diagnosis or mark the procedures. But all the different, individual quirks each payer has about what they want to see on a claim form, the documentation that you have to provide to justify a certain level of complex procedure, that you want to hire reimbursement rate for, our software, among other things, helps try to maximize that for you. CW: Now the practice management software that we’re talking about, it’s more facing the back side of the office, right? The business side more than the clinical side? So it links in with an electronic medical record? Interview continued on Insight into the Industry Part 2 next week… Read Part 2 here.