Billing Company Breathes New Life Into Client Management Processes

“Let us breathe new life into your practice,” reads the tagline of Little Rock, Arkansas-based medical billing company Complete Provider Resource. In early 2017, they got the wind knocked out of them when they lost their largest client.

President Shirley Walker began the billing company in 2010, after a long career in managed care, working specifically with provider offices. “I could see a lot of the pain points offices encounter,” says Walker, “from lack of knowledge to shortage of time and everything in between.” Walker and the team at Complete Provider Resource have 40 combined years of healthcare and administrative experience—ample expertise to guide medical practices to succeed. And with CPR being the company acronym and their driving mission to rescue and indeed “breathe new life” into financially ailing medical practices, something like this should never have happened.

The Symptoms

In short, Walker and the CPR team didn’t have the tools they needed to easily provide their clients with answers.

It all started when their software provider informed them of a change in ownership, forcing them to switch to a new vendor. For Walker, that change never had the successful outcome they were promised. From dealing with continued issues with plan enrollment, ineffective reports and claims challenges, to lackluster support from the implementation team, the new system was nothing short of frustrating.

Getting answers to even simple questions like, “What is the average contracted amount allowed on this code?” was exceptionally challenging. Even tracking internal work processes, such as volume worked by each biller, was nearly impossible. 

And when she reached out to the vendor for help? “Receiving assistance from the customer service team was beyond frustrating,” says Walker. “We spent a large amount of time on the phone. We were charged an additional fee to implement a direct path to pull down data and create our own reports, and that never worked as promised either.”

And don’t even mention patient statements to the CPR team. “We could not get a correct patient balance,” says Shirley. “We found patients who were missed, duplicates and overpayments because of how the statements were calculated. We got to the point where we had to stop and fix almost every statement.”

All of this culminated in losing their largest client in January 2017. This was the last straw for Walker, who had started the business to relieve office managers struggling with the enormous task of running a successful medical practice.

The Treatment

Walker began shopping for new software again. She also had to make the difficult but necessary decision to downsize. This concerned her because even with the loss of this client, the CPR team had plenty of work to do. In order for the team to successfully support their remaining clientele, they needed to be able to manage client data more efficiently and accurately. Walker made the decision to switch to the Kareo Billing Company Edition software platform, primarily for the ease with which they could perform the functions they needed.

Anticipating the learning curve with a new software system even after training and onboarding, Walker organized an internal management retreat to revisit each of their billing and management processes using Kareo. As a team, they reviewed the steps to make sure they were set up to make the most of their new system.

“We left that day with a huge sense of accomplishment,” says Walker. “And we’ve already been able to implement several changes which have helped us become more productive, including shifting staff responsibilities and changing our reporting processes.”

The Outcomes

By implementing solid training for all her staff to be successful with their new billing management system, Complete Provider Resource is happy to see their business thriving—with days in A/R under 30 days across clients, faster processing of claims and providing clients with accurate data. Improved client satisfaction has meant fewer phone calls and emails (especially angry ones), which frees up their time to do their jobs more effectively. “We’re not quite where we want to be yet, but we can see the goal getting closer,” says Walker. “We have found the stability, ease of use and comfort factor for our clients that we were looking for.”

Download the Complete Provider Resource case study to find out more: