Switching billers in 4 steps, one payer at a time

Your old biller keeps the rest of your payers until the new biller's claims come back paid. Cancel the old biller last.

Nate Peereboom
Co-founder, JotPsych

Your new biller can start next month, and you're about to give your old biller notice. Don't send that notice yet. Move your payers one at a time, and your claims keep going out while you switch.

1. Keep your old biller for now

Find the notice period in your old biller's contract, the days the old biller keeps working after you give notice.

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. Then a software company offered to do the filing. "I proceeded to sign a contract," said Chris King, Pinnacle's chief executive.

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 inbox was "totally full again," his daughter told him. Pinnacle ended the contract. "We never got the product," King said.

Pinnacle was moving fax filing, not billing, but your claims would wait like Pinnacle's faxes if your old biller stopped before the new biller worked.

2. Call a practice that already uses the new biller

Have your 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.

King's first software company said yes when he asked whether its product worked with Pinnacle's EHR. On the second try, King checked the answer with a practice that already used the new software on the same EHR.

3. Move one payer first

Pick a payer you bill every week. Move only that payer to the new biller. Keep your old biller on the rest of your payers until the new biller's claims for that first payer come back paid.

4. Cancel the old biller last

Move your next payer after the first payer's claims come back paid. Repeat for every payer. Give your old biller notice after the last payer's claims come back paid.