How to switch billers and keep your claims going out
Pick one switch date. The new biller bills every visit from that date, and the old biller finishes the claims from before that date.
Co-founder, JotPsych
If your new biller can start next month, call a practice on your EHR that uses the new biller before you sign that biller's contract. Don't give your old biller notice until at least two months after the switch date.
- 1Call a practice on your EHR that uses the new biller
- 2Pick one switch date
- 3Send the new biller one balance per patient
- 4Give your old biller notice last
Suggested order for a behavioral health practice that moves its billing to a new biller. The notice to the old biller goes out after each patient's balance reaches the new biller.
1. Call a practice on your EHR that uses the new biller
Ask your new biller whether it works with your EHR. Have the new biller name a client practice that uses your EHR. Call that practice before you sign the new biller's contract, and ask how long the practice's first claims took to come back paid.
Pinnacle Medical Group, a primary care group in Northern Nevada, gets faxes from pharmacies and specialists. Pinnacle paid an outsourcing company overseas to file each fax in the patient's chart, and then a software company offered to do the filing.
Chris King, Pinnacle's chief executive, asked whether the software worked with Pinnacle's EHR. The company said yes. "I proceeded to sign a contract," King said. Months later, Pinnacle ended its contract with the software company. "We never got the product," King said.
On the second try, King asked a different software company the same question. Then he spoke with a practice that already used the new software with the same EHR as Pinnacle, and Pinnacle moved its fax filing to that software. If your new biller says yes, check that answer the way King did, with a practice on your EHR.
2. Pick one switch date
Pick the date your new biller takes over. That date is your switch date. Every visit on or after that date bills with the new biller.
Let your old biller finish the claims from before that date. The old biller submits them, follows up, appeals, and posts each payment. When the payer's payment record for one of those claims reaches your new biller, get that record and send it to your old biller to post.
3. Send the new biller one balance per patient
Ask your old biller for each patient's balance once the claims from before your switch date finish. Send your new biller one balance per patient, the total that patient still owes. Don't send each visit's charges. Patients with a credit keep the credit.
4. Give your old biller notice last
Wait at least two months after your switch date, until the claims from before that date finish and your new biller has the balances. Then give your old biller notice.
On the first try, Pinnacle canceled the outsourcing company before the software worked. "Three months went by. Four months went by," King said. His son, his daughter, and her boyfriend filed the faxes while Pinnacle waited, and every morning the fax inbox was "totally full again," his daughter told him.
If your old biller stopped before the new biller worked, your claims would wait like Pinnacle's faxes.
Chris King, chief executive of Pinnacle Medical Group, described both tries. Pink marks the step that came too early, purple marks what the first try cost, and dark blue marks the step that worked. In a biller switch, the pink step is the notice to the old biller.
Pick your switch date, and every visit from that date on bills in JotBill, JotPsych's billing system.
Book 15 minutes- Chris King, chief executive officer of Pinnacle Medical Group, “Tight Margins, New Locations: How Two CEOs Are Growing With AI,” session B7, Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) 2026 Annual Conference, San Antonio, September 28, 2026.
- Pinnacle Medical Group, home page, read September 30, 2026.