Medical Billing Companies & Consultants in Amesbury, MA

Billing Advantage, Inc. is an outsourced medical billing company headquartered in Amesbury, Massachusetts. It handles insurance billing for independent clinicians and group practices, and its site says it currently bills for more than 300 clinicians across 22 states. Practices looking to move claims work off their own staff will find that the firm covers the full billing cycle, from data entry through collection of patient balances.

Background and Team

The company was incorporated in Massachusetts in 2004. It started inside the owners' own counseling clinic, known as Psychotherapy Associates of Amesbury. The founders, Richard (Rick) Kaufman, who serves as CEO, and Donna Whipple, who serves as President, are both clinicians. The firm presents this clinical background as its main difference from other billing services, because its leaders know the provider side of the reimbursement process firsthand. Many of its billers have more than two decades of experience. The listed management team includes a revenue manager, a director of operations, a director of client services, a senior implementation specialist, a senior process analyst and several team leaders, which points to a structured staff rather than a single-person operation.

How They Work With Clients

The firm runs its billing on Tebra, a practice management and billing platform, and clients can view their practice data and reports in it at any hour. Practices choose how much data entry they handle themselves. Some send all encounter details to the Billing Advantage team. Others enter demographics, CPT and diagnosis codes in Tebra or in the free Practice Fusion EHR, which lowers their fees, and the company provides free training for this. Before a claim goes out electronically, staff check each encounter by hand and add the remaining insurance details. Ongoing customer support comes with every service at no added charge.

Services

• Electronic claims submission with manual review of each encounter
• Persistent follow-up on rejected, denied, underpaid or unanswered claims
• Secondary insurance billing at no additional charge
• Monthly patient statements, with the company's staff taking patient billing calls
• Full or shared data entry options
• Provider credentialing with insurance companies
• Practice management consultation

Specialties Served

Because of its roots in psychotherapy, the company has strong experience with behavioral health, including large mental health group practices and psychiatry, where a separate payer may administer the behavioral health benefits apart from medical coverage. Its specialty pages also cover cardiology, family practice, pediatrics, internal medicine, general surgery, orthopedics, wound care, acupuncture, plastic surgery, and occupational, speech and physical therapy. Client testimonials on the site come from psychologists, licensed clinical social workers, physicians and a 27-provider group, and several mention relationships going back to 2007 or 2011. That makes the firm a fit for solo clinicians and multi-provider groups that want a long-term billing partner run by clinicians.