Mental Health Billing|Psycholoy Billing|Social Work Billing | Counselor Billing | Psychologist & Psychotherapist Billing | Psych Billing

 Costs, Prices and Options for Mental Health Billing

1.  First, figure how much money you are spending, and how much money you are losing, by doing it yourself or paying your own staff.

• How much money do you make seeing clients per hour?
• How much time do you spend on the phone per month doing insurance related things that could be done by someone else?
• How much time do you spend buying the supplies or maintaining the equipment or software needed?  Buying printer ink? Shredding forms with mistakes, etc?
• How much time do you spend reading updates from insurance companies, trying to keep up with insurance changes related to NPI numbers, HIPAA, etc?
• How much time do you spend on hold waiting for insurance company staff to talk to you?  
• How much time do you spend training and retraining your own staff?
• How much time do you spend on paperwork that could be done by someone else?
• Do you enjoy doing these insurance and billing related tasks? 

Multiply the hours you are spending by your rate per hour.  This is your cost in lost revenue in terms of your time. 

Hourly Rate x Number of Lost Billable Hours per Month = _____________ Lost Revenue

And if you hate doing these tasks and would rather spend two hours doing therapy than one hour doing them, factor that in, possibly increasing the value of that lost revenue figure by as much as a multiple of two.  If you enjoy doing these tasks, and would rather do them than therapy, you may choose to reduce the figure above.

2. Second, estimate your lost opportunity cost. 

• How many more clients do you estimate you could attract if you spent the time marketing your practice instead of doing secretarial and billing work? 
• How much more networking, public speaking, writing or other activities would you do?
• Or would you take a walk, meditate, or do other things that would improve your work performance?

Consider whether you would have time and energy to market your practice more, grow your practice more, or create you ideal practice if you didn't have such insurance billing chores?   Nobody can market your practice the way you can, but someone else may well be able to do insurance billing better than you. And would you have more energy to devote to your practice if you could get rid of tasks you dislike?

• How many unpaid claims do you have because you have not had the time and patience to follow-up on them?  Be honest with yourself here. 
• Are you really spending the time need to follow-up and get the claim paid, or do you give up because your time is more valuable than the relatively small amount of money you will get to collect the claim?
• Are you "leaving money on the table?" that a dedicated, detail oriented, clerical type person who expects to make far less money per hour than you would go after for you?  
• Do your accounts ever get so messed up that it takes you months before you send a patient a statement, or just write off a balance entirely because you can't figure out how to get it to balance properly?
• What is your current rate of collections?

 Many therapists hate insurance follow-up on rejected claims and avoid doing it.  To them it seems like a small amount of money and not worth the drudgery. 

• Do you ever lose money because you fail to keep track of your authorizations?    

Lost Opportunity Cost Estimate = $___________

3.  Third, figure your expenses for billing and claim filing.

• How much do you pay staff per month, including taxes, worker's comp, etc?
• How much do you spend on postage, paper, printer ink, supplies, claim forms, clearinghouse fees, etc?
• How much do you spend on software and how much on software maintenance fees?
• How much office space and filing space would you gain if you outsourced or used a telecommuting virtual assistant rather than an in-house employee?
• Are there any services you pay for that you would not need if you outsource your billing? Would you be able to cut back on a phone line or another expense? 

Expenses Incurred per Month for billing = $________________

4.  Fourth total the three figures above. 

5.  Get ready to compare prices of outsourcing your billing with what you are currently doing.  When you compare prices you will generally be quoted prices in two ways:

1. Fee per service  or
2. Percentage of collections

But first, consider this warning before even considering paying a percentage of your collections to a billing service. 

Decide if you want to take the risk that your billing company's practice of charging by a percentage of collections will harm your practice or make you the subject of an audit.

MyMedicalBillingServices opposes charging for billing based on a fee of collections and will only quote our services on a fee per service basis.

6. Compare prices: 

If you do want to take the risk in considering a percentage of collections billing service, compare prices between fee per service billing companies and percentage of collections billing companies by first figuring your average month's collections.  Then figure how many visits you do in a month, how many statements you would want a billing company to send out for you, how many visits involve primary insurance, how many visits involve secondary insurance, and how many new patients you see in a month and what other services you would want, such as tracking authorizations. 

Also pay attention to how a "claim" is defined if it is fee per service.  Some companies count it as a "claim" every time a claim is filed, no matter how many times it is rejected and refiled.  Some companies allow more than one code or date of service to be on one claim, others do not. 

Pay attention to whether you are billed extra for clearinghouse, postage, or other services, or whether they are included.

Also pay attention to what set up fees are involved and whether a long term contract is required.

Our fee per service prices and options:

	$4.75 per claim (one session/encounter/visit) for patient accounting and primary claim filing and follow-up on rejected claims (no matter if it has to be re-filed several times). We will follow-up on denied insurance until the point an appeal would be necessary, then you will need to decide if it is worth appealing and handle the appeal yourself.
	$4.75 additional per claim (one session/encounter/visit) when there is secondary insurance to file.
	$6.00 set up fee per new patient added to the billing system or for a former patient who needs to complete a new patient information form due to significant address/insurance changes.
	$100 per provider initial database and/or clearinghouse set-up fee. (Waived in the telecommuting virtual assistant option if your practice is already set up with your own clearinghouse account and your practice information is already set up in your own software. Also waived if in the web based billing option if you choose to set the practice up yourself instead of requiring us to do it.) Additional Services  We recommend that for the highest level of collections, therapists know what their client's insurance benefits are before the first visit and collect all co-pays and fees not expected from the insurance company personally at the time of service. You will have the highest rates of collections if you try very hard not to let clients get behind on paying you and send few patient statements. However, some statements to clients will likely be necessary, as insurance does not always pay as expected and there are times when clients are unable to pay at the time of service.  We charge $1 per statement with a minimum of $25 if you want us to print and mail your statements monthly.  We will fax statement to you for $1 each (with no minimum).  If you use the web-based option or the virtual assistant option and hoave only a few statements each month, you may prefer to simply print and mail statement yourself. We will charge you $12 per verification of benefits if you do not do it prior to sending us the first visit to be charged, if we need the information in order to correctly do your patient accounting.  Because mental health benefits usually can not be accurately obtained from websites, benefits must generally be verified by telephone and there are often long wait times on hold with insurance companies. Our virtual assistants are capable of doing other tasks for you on a per hour basis if you provide the appropriate software or voicemail systems.  Examples can include answering your phone, scheduling clients appointments, verifying benefits, making appointment confirmation calls, or helping you with credentialing. If her schedule permits, Susan Huebert can also consult with you or refer you to other specialists for practice management and practice marketing, such as teaching you how to get referrals from the Internet, how to get a website designed or optimized for search engines in an affordable way, or getting an Internet advertising campaign set up for you.  Call about per hour rates for these additional services.

No long-term contract is required.  Services are provided with a signed contract, which includes an agreement for   HIPAA compliance, which may be terminated with 30 days notice.   

We have three basic options for ways to do your billing. Click on the links below for benefits, how it works,  features, what the therapist provides and initial costs,  and examples of monthly invoice amounts and comparison to percentage of collections fees for each option.

• Option 1: The “Starter Package” Traditional Billing

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• Option 2: Web Based Billing

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• Option 3: Telecommuting Virtual Assistant

These prices are current as of , and are subject to change.