Looking to start a private practice soon and wondering about medical billers. Do I need to look in my specific state? Any resources you can recommend to find billers or particular billing services you like?
How to find a medical biller/recommendations?
- Thread starter Psychresy
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Recommend you stay away from Lytec. It's a computer billing system. Reason why is if you leave their system you can't access prior data unless you maintain your monthly subscription. So say you had Lytec, you find a different and better billing software program or you have to switch cause your EMR changes, and a patient says they want their bills from 5 months ago, you can't access their financial transactions unless you keep paying for Lytec, or you call Lytec, ask for the patient's records and I'm not making this up, they charge you $200 just to grab the records. (I'm serious).
Lytec does allow you to download the data before you leave their service but the data is only interpretable through their software that requires a monthly fee. It's like having an Excel file. You need Excel to read it. While there are free Excel alternatives that can still read Excel files Lytec doesn't have a free equivalent that can read it's data.
If you have the raw data, yes you could look up the raw text but expect to spend dozens of hours trying to make sense of it and then not be sure you interpreted it correctly.
Lytec does allow you to download the data before you leave their service but the data is only interpretable through their software that requires a monthly fee. It's like having an Excel file. You need Excel to read it. While there are free Excel alternatives that can still read Excel files Lytec doesn't have a free equivalent that can read it's data.
If you have the raw data, yes you could look up the raw text but expect to spend dozens of hours trying to make sense of it and then not be sure you interpreted it correctly.
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Is that legal? If the patient wants their records then have the patient contact them and get the records
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Maybe it's not legal but that's what this business does. You as the doctor also have a commitment to provide records for a few years. After that time is up you don't have to do so. The number of years depends on the state you're in.
As you likely figured I used Lytec and didn't choose to do so. It was thrust on me. When I entered private practice I entered a practice that did a lot of the stuff for you such as do your billing and they used Lytec. I got out of Lytec when the main doctor in the practice and his wife who did a lot of office operations decided to scale back cause they're getting older.
So the recommended I get a new billing system and saw this crap going on upfront. I even had a computer buddy of mine grab the data and spent a few hundred doing so, but the bottom line was that you needed to continue having access to the software to easily read it. Loading it up on a text program brought up all of the computer SQPR file data along with the financial data causing high risk for error in interpreting the data.
Whenever using an EHR or billing system ask ahead of time what's the policy on getting out and how will patients and you get the data if you switch EHRs.
As you likely figured I used Lytec and didn't choose to do so. It was thrust on me. When I entered private practice I entered a practice that did a lot of the stuff for you such as do your billing and they used Lytec. I got out of Lytec when the main doctor in the practice and his wife who did a lot of office operations decided to scale back cause they're getting older.
So the recommended I get a new billing system and saw this crap going on upfront. I even had a computer buddy of mine grab the data and spent a few hundred doing so, but the bottom line was that you needed to continue having access to the software to easily read it. Loading it up on a text program brought up all of the computer SQPR file data along with the financial data causing high risk for error in interpreting the data.
Whenever using an EHR or billing system ask ahead of time what's the policy on getting out and how will patients and you get the data if you switch EHRs.
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Find an OLD psychiatrist that is on the verge of retiring. Ask for his/her billing person's name.
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I found mine via a local colleague
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If you PM me I can send you the contact info of my own biller. The nature of billing allows now for you to get billers that aren't in your specific locality. Her rates are competitive and she allows me to pay with my business credit card and that nice credit card kicks me back 2%.
One more Lytec complaint, when I decided I was going to go with a new biller each communication with them on transitioning to a new biller were with several BS comments like "you're going to be charged" for this and that, and their responses were slow, uncooperative and they'd find excuses to nickel and dime me here and there.
I've left several software packages before, and in almost every instance those software help guys would usually be cooperative, cordial, and ask me to remember them if I needed to reconsider their software again. Not Lytec. Avoid them.
One more Lytec complaint, when I decided I was going to go with a new biller each communication with them on transitioning to a new biller were with several BS comments like "you're going to be charged" for this and that, and their responses were slow, uncooperative and they'd find excuses to nickel and dime me here and there.
I've left several software packages before, and in almost every instance those software help guys would usually be cooperative, cordial, and ask me to remember them if I needed to reconsider their software again. Not Lytec. Avoid them.
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