Medical Billing Companies & Consultants in Urbandale, IA

HealthMed Inc. is a medical billing firm based in Urbandale, Iowa, on the northwest side of the Des Moines metro. It works mainly for physicians and healthcare practices that want to hand off the administrative work of a business office. The company has been in operation since 1985, so it has worked through many rounds of change in healthcare reimbursement and regulation.

What the Company Does

The firm acts as an outsourced billing department. Practices pass their revenue-cycle paperwork to HealthMed's staff, which frees physicians to focus on patient care and lets in-house employees get back to their main duties. The team includes seasoned billers and certified coders, and the company presents itself as a long-term business partner that reacts early to industry changes rather than just a claims processor.

• Professional medical billing and claims handling
• Coding done by certified coding staff
• Follow-up on balances, with small accounts given the same attention as large ones
• Accounts receivable management focused on faster payment
• Help keeping up with HIPAA and other compliance rules
• Use of the firm's own computer systems, so clients don't have to maintain billing technology in-house

How It Works With Clients

HealthMed starts by learning what each practice needs and then builds solutions around those needs. It says it supports both short-term goals and longer-range plans. The company describes its billing policies as consistent and cost-effective, with the aim of shortening the time between a patient visit and payment. One practical point for buyers is that clients can work on HealthMed's systems, which spares a practice the cost and work of keeping billing software and hardware current.

The firm puts weight on thorough follow-up across the whole receivables portfolio. Low-dollar balances get the same treatment as high-dollar ones, which can matter for practices where many small patient or payer balances often go uncollected.

Reported Performance and Background

HealthMed publishes several performance figures on its site: a collection rate of about 97 percent, an average of 34 days in accounts receivable, less than 10 percent of receivables older than 120 days, and write-offs to collections below 1 percent of receivables.

It links these results to higher practice income, lower overhead, fewer billing problems and time saved for practice staff. Buyers comparing vendors may want to ask how these figures are measured and whether they match their own specialty and payer mix.

Its single office is in the Des Moines area, close to Ankeny, so the company may suit Iowa practices that want a nearby billing partner with decades of history. Third-party business listings describe it as a small, owner-led firm, a size that can mean more direct contact with the people handling an account. Practices weighing outsourced billing against an in-house team can consider HealthMed's long history, its use of certified coders, its hosted systems and its compliance support.