Medical Billing Companies & Consultants in Merrillville, IN

CSI Medical Billing is an outsourced billing firm based in Merrillville, Indiana. It does business under the legal name Consultant Specialists of Illiana, a nod to the Illinois and Indiana region where it started.

The company handles the revenue side of medical practices and other healthcare organizations, taking on the paperwork and payer contact that often pull office staff away from patient care. For buyers in Northwest Indiana, including Hammond, it is a nearby option with an office in Lake County.

What the firm handles

The firm covers the whole billing process instead of a single task. Its work includes submitting charges, tracking what payers owe, and following up on unpaid accounts before they need to go to an outside collector. Its listed areas of work include:

• Managing accounts receivable, with regular reporting on open balances
• Recovering payments to maximize reimbursement on submitted claims
• Resolving disputes over balances and individual transactions
• Supporting the privacy and data-security requirements of HIPAA
• Coding by staff who hold professional coding certifications
• Pre-collection follow-up on overdue patient and payer accounts

How it works with clients

The firm offers remote access, so a practice can review its billing activity without being on site and work with the team from anywhere. That setup is why the company says it serves clients across all fifty states, even though it runs from one Indiana office. A new engagement starts with a free review of the practice's billing needs, and services are then shaped to fit that client instead of following a fixed package.

The company puts weight on personal attention. Clients can expect a working relationship with a dedicated team rather than a high-volume processing center. The firm also says it keeps up with changing payer rules and coding standards. That matters to practices worried about denials, compliance exposure and the time staff spend relearning requirements.

Background

Listings describe the company as having more than a decade of hands-on experience in medical billing, though that figure comes from an undated listing. Its corporate office is in Merrillville, which puts it within easy driving distance of Hammond, Crown Point and other Lake County communities. Its published materials describe it as a service firm and do not mention any billing software or other products for sale.

Buyers comparing medical billing vendors may find CSI Medical Billing worth a look if they want an independent regional provider that covers both front-end claims and back-end receivables. Its use of certified coders, attention to HIPAA safeguards and remote access for clients are useful points to raise when comparing it with larger national outsourcing companies.

Custom Data Services, Inc. is a Merrillville, Indiana firm that handles the administrative side of physician reimbursement. The company began working with doctors in 1973 and has spent more than five decades supporting practices. Its clients are medical practices that would rather spend staff time on patients than on claims, payer paperwork and receivables. The work falls into three connected areas: billing, coding and credentialing. Together these cover much of what a practice needs to get paid accurately.

Billing and revenue cycle support

The billing offering is tailored to each client rather than sold as a fixed package. Custom Data Services can cover every stage of a practice's revenue cycle. That runs from entering registration information to answering patient questions about their statements. Practices choose how much help they want, and the company builds a set of tasks that fits how the office already operates. Typical components include:

• Entry of patient and charge data
• Posting of payments received
• Follow-up on outstanding insurance claims
• Support for patients with billing questions
• Management of accounts receivable

Practices can also request a complimentary assessment of their revenue cycle. The review is meant to find the obstacles that pull physicians and staff away from patient care. For buyers comparing vendors, it is a low-commitment way to see how the firm diagnoses a practice's billing problems before signing an agreement.

Medical coding

A team of certified coders converts the documentation physicians produce into ICD-10 and CPT codes for claims. The company also performs coding audits. The firm says its coders keep their knowledge current through ongoing education and webinars, which matters because code sets and payer rules change often. Its coding workflow relies on modern software and can connect with 3M's computer-assisted coding platform. CodeRyte by 3M is available to clients who want technology-assisted code selection.

Credentialing and provider enrollment

Credentialing staff enroll physicians with the appropriate insurance plans so that payments are not held up by missing or incorrect participation status. The team prepares enrollment applications and tracks them with payers until each provider is fully credentialed. This takes the paperwork off a practice's own employees. Having billing, coding and enrollment handled by one vendor can also mean fewer handoffs between separate contractors.

The company also runs an online portal where patients of its client practices can pay bills by credit card or with HSA and FSA funds. A help section answers common questions and gives directions to the Merrillville office. Custom Data Services suits physician practices looking for a long-established partner that can scale its outside support to the level each office needs.

Expert Medical Billing, LLC is a small, physician-founded revenue cycle management firm based in Merrillville, Indiana, a short drive from Gary. It works with healthcare practices that want to hand off their billing and coding to an outside team rather than running those functions with in-house staff. The company describes itself as a boutique operation. Each client is assigned its own group of specialists instead of being placed in a shared pool.

Background and Leadership

The firm was started by Dr. Tarek Shahbandar, a physician who holds two board certifications and has owned a medical practice for about two decades. He runs a pain management practice in Merrillville. He found that handling billing internally was expensive and slow. He then worked through a series of outside billing vendors without lasting success.

He and Jacqui Bork decided to create their own full-service revenue cycle company. According to the founder, the approach raised his own practice's first-pass claim acceptance to 98 percent. The resulting revenue gains freed up resources for patient care.

Because the business grew out of a working clinic, buyers can expect a team that understands billing from the provider's side of the desk.

Services Offered

The company covers the billing cycle from front-end data capture through final payment. Its published services include:

• End-to-end revenue cycle management, from patient registration and charge capture onward
• Medical coding, including attention to ICD-10 and CPT guidelines
• Claim preparation, submission and follow-up with payers
• Handling of denied claims, including correction and resubmission
• Payment posting and reconciliation
• Comprehensive billing audits to find coding errors and missed charges
• Compliance oversight and risk management, including HIPAA considerations
• Billing consultations and process optimization

How They Work With Clients

New engagements begin with a no-cost consultation to learn about the practice and its billing problems. The team then audits the practice's billing data. It looks for recurring issues such as coding mistakes, inconsistencies and revenue that was never billed. The audit findings are used to build a strategy tailored to that practice.

The firm's billing staff then put the plan into practice and fold the new procedures into the client's existing workflow. After implementation, clients receive performance reports on a weekly, monthly and annual basis. The team also holds recurring meetings to review changes in the practice or in payer and regulatory rules, and adjusts its methods as needed.

What Sets Them Apart

The firm's team combines billing specialists with practitioners drawn from several areas of healthcare. This mix is meant to help it handle complex insurance claims and shifting coding rules. Its stated priorities are accuracy at every step, quality checks from coding through reconciliation, and faster reimbursement for clients.

Practices in Northwest Indiana weighing outsourced billing may find it notable that the company was built by a local practice owner who first tested the model on his own clinic. Its consult-first, audit-based onboarding and dedicated client teams also set it apart from larger, high-volume billing vendors.