Let’s Stop Wasting Our Profits (Collectively)

I am so sick of wasting so much money on collecting from insurance companies.  Each and every practice is wasting its profits on “back-of-the house” operations.  NY SportsMed runs a large “in-house” billing department – this is a very expensive operation – but I have found it better (most likely not cheaper though) than out-sourcing.

To do billing in-house NY SportsMed spends 10’s of thousands of dollars to keep up on the ever changing environment of billing.  We bring in billing consultants quarterly.  Our company is lucky in that we can afford this investment; most small practices (and small billing companies) could never make this investment. We are very good at billing, but we spend so much money to be good at it (right now our billing department is 6 full time employees – all located in Manhattan on the most expensive square footage in the country).

Our company is not only wasting money on billing, we all waste money on other information that we could share, like calls to our attorneys.  It drives me crazy to think that we are paying our attorney $300 per hour to answer a question and the practice down the street is paying their attorney $300 an hour to get the same answer to the same question.

I propose the creation of a billing “cooperative”.  I don’t feel that there is “competition” among our practices, why don’t we agree to share back-of-the-house resources?

The basic idea of the billing co-operative is that we will create a billing company that we all can own (member-owned and operated, an alternative to commercial profit-orientated medical billing company).  As members, we will work together to build the most efficient and knowledgeable and ethical billing company.  Only members may use the resources, we will share in the expenses based on actual use / actual expenses.

By combining resources we will eliminate duplicity of billing departments, and eliminate the third-party-for-profit billing companies.  Members will share information on a real-time basis to help all member companies become more profitable.

I propose the following principles:

1st Principle: Voluntary and Open Membership

The Billing cooperative would be a voluntary organizations, open to all physical therapists willing to accept the responsibilities of membership, to use the services of stated co-op.

2nd Principle: Democratic Member Control

The billing cooperative will be a democratic organization controlled by their members, who actively participate in setting their policies and making decisions. Elected representatives are accountable to the membership.

3rd Principle: Member Economic Participation

Members contribute equitably to, and democratically control, the capital of their cooperative. At least part of that capital is usually the common property of the cooperative. Members usually receive limited compensation, if any, on capital subscribed as a condition of membership. Members allocate surpluses for any or all of the following purposes: developing their cooperative, possibly by setting up reserves, part of which at least would be indivisible; benefiting members in proportion to their transactions with the cooperative; and supporting other activities approved by the membership.

4th Principle: Autonomy and Independence

The billing cooperative would be an autonomous, self-help organization, controlled by the members. If the co-op were to enter to agreements with other organizations, including governments, or raise capital from external sources, it would do so on terms that ensure democratic control by their members and maintain the co-operative autonomy.

5th Principle: Education, Training and Information

The billing co-op will provide education and training for their members, elected representatives, managers, and employees so they can contribute effectively to the development of the billing co-operative.  Members will share billing related information to other member’s of the co-op, individuals working in the co-op will be educated to provide the highest level of service to the members.

6^th Principle: Level of Service

The billing cooperative will provide a higher level of service to members by sharing information among practices.  Billing standards will be increased; practices revenues will increase as all practices will share in real-time information.

Let’s start the conversation, email me if you are interested: abanks@nysportsmed.com