Psych Administrative Partners is a billing service based in St. Louis, Mo. It serves 17 providers and sends about 500 claims a month electronically representing 85 percent of its business.
Owner Susan Frager is a licensed clinical social worker who does not practice. She began Psych Administrative Partners in 1998.
Frager began sending claims electronically in 2001 with what she calls a "very basic" tool and a dial-up connection. For her amount of business at the time, it wasn't worth the expense to upgrade to a better product.
After four years, Frager's initial equipment was no longer serviced, and she was forced to move to a different system. Her cost was about $75 a month. She used that until April of 2006 when her clearinghouse required her to upgrade. The new price was $390 a month.
"It wasn't clear to me that the upgrade I was getting warranted the five-fold increase in price," Frager said. "I don't have any problems with upgrades, but if I don't need them and I don't see the value in them, then I don't want to be forced to use them and I certainly don't want to be forced to pay for them."
Frager became familiar with Capario when she attended the 2005 HBMA Fall Conference. She switched to Capario to save more than $300 a month – including an HBMA discount – but she was blown away by the ease of enrolling her providers.
Her previous clearinghouse had no online enrollment system. "We had to fill out redundant paperwork. Sometimes you had to put in the address and tax ID three times. You had to get signatures when signatures weren't necessary. Then you waited. Sometimes it took weeks to enroll for commercial payers. I'm a billing service. I can't be down that long."
When new Capario customers are assigned a client ID, they also receive a user ID and password. With that they can go online and manage their enrollments. Frager explained the ease of the process: "You put in the provider name, tax ID, license number and contact person, then hit enter. You get back a message that says you're approved for the following commercial payers – then you start the process of signing up for the Blues."
Frager receives an e-mail letting her know when each enrollment is complete. Or she goes online to see the status of an enrollment request. In experiences with other companies, her enrollments would be approved but she wouldn't know because she wasn't told the status.
One online feature Frager especially likes is the "open trouble ticket" button on the claims tracking service. Rather than calling customer service when she has a problem, she clicks on that button to e-mail her question. The one time she used it, she got a response the same day. In another instance, Frager called the customer service department, and her issue was researched and resolved in less than 10 minutes.
Frager began sending claims to commercial payers electronically less than two weeks after being contacted by Capario’s implementation department. The average implementation time for a new provider is 18 business days.
Frager's frustration now is that payers do not have an online method of enrollment similar to Capario's.
If the price had not increased dramatically, Frager would have stayed with her previous service to avoid the anticipated down time during implementation and enrollment. Instead, she's saving money, getting efficient processes and receiving prompt support. "I am so amazed and pleased," she said.
Capario has a long-standing history of helping physicians, payers and other healthcare organizations reduce claims processing costs and expedite revenue cycle management processes.
Frager began sending claims to commercial payers electronically less than two weeks after being contacted by Capario's implementation department.