Medical Billing Companies & Consultants in Lansing, MI

Medical Management Systems of Michigan, often shortened to MMSM, is a Lansing-based firm that handles billing, coding and credentialing work for healthcare providers and emergency medical services organizations. The company has been locally owned since 1984. That gives it roughly four decades of experience with the reimbursement rules Michigan practices face.

Its clients range from solo physicians to multi-provider specialty groups and county-level EMS authorities. The firm scales each engagement to the specialty, claim volume and objectives of the organization it supports.

Services offered

MMSM positions itself as a single outsourcing partner. It covers the full revenue cycle as well as the administrative tasks that keep providers eligible to bill. Its published service lines include:

• Medical billing for physician practices and specialty groups
• EMS and ambulance billing covering both emergency and non-emergency trips
• Provider credentialing with commercial and government payers
• Provider enrollment, including revalidation and linking providers to groups
• Surgery billing for high-complexity procedures
• Urgent care billing designed for high patient volume
• Revenue cycle management spanning eligibility checks through final payment
• Practice consulting, with launch planning for new practices, training for staff and providers, and chart reviews

Specialties mentioned on its site include behavioral health, primary care, urgent care, surgery and EMS. The team is described as experienced with Medicare, Medicaid, Michigan's Blue Cross Blue Shield plan and commercial insurers. It works within whichever practice-management or EHR platform a client already uses rather than requiring a system change.

How the firm works with clients

The company emphasizes active denial management. Instead of writing off rejected or underpaid claims, its staff pursue appeals and corrections. Clients receive monthly reports showing metrics such as clean-claim rate, days in accounts receivable and net collections. MMSM presents this reporting as a remedy for the limited visibility many practices have into their finances.

The firm argues that relying on one in-house biller creates a single point of failure, and that problems often go unnoticed until tax season. Its team-based model is meant to address that risk. Its consulting group also supports clients during payer audits.

In one case described on the site, consultants reviewed disputed claims, sat down with the insurer's auditors and supplied documentation. The result was a reduction of about $500,000 in the practice's claimed liability.

Credentials and background

MMSM's coders and billers hold CPC and CPB certifications. All work is performed by staff in the United States with no offshoring. The company states that its operations are HIPAA-compliant and reports a first-submission clean-claim rate of 98 percent. Over its history it says it has worked with several hundred practices and EMS agencies and handled millions of claims.

Its office is on Lake Lansing Road in Lansing. It serves providers throughout Michigan and offers secure remote access for clients outside the immediate area.

For buyers comparing billing vendors, several traits set MMSM apart. These include its long Michigan track record and dedicated EMS billing capability alongside physician billing. It also combines credentialing and enrollment services with a consulting arm that can help with audits, training and new practice launches.

White Crane Billing Solutions is a Lansing, Michigan billing bureau that works only with psychotherapists. It has handled insurance claims for therapists since 1991. Blue Cross and Medicare have both approved it as a billing service bureau, and Blue Cross has recognized the firm for the quality of its support. Mental health clinicians comparing billing vendors will find a small, specialized service run by someone who has done the same clinical work as they do.

Background and Leadership

The company is owned by Kenneth L. Salzman, PhD, a licensed clinical psychologist. He started White Crane after dealing with the paperwork and detail of insurance billing in his own practice. He first built a simpler process for himself and then offered it to other therapists. Because he is a clinician, the service is shaped by what practitioners need, so therapists can spend their time on treatment instead of forms.

How the Service Works

White Crane's main feature is its simple intake process. Therapists record billing for every client on one sheet, not a separate form for each claim. The forms ask only for the information needed, and the staff can read dates and entries in whatever format the clinician writes them.

Psychotherapy practices tend to bill the same clients, procedures, diagnoses and fees again and again, and the bureau uses that pattern to cut down repeated data entry. Practices can send in their billing weekly, monthly or on any schedule they like. The service works for both solo practitioners and group practices.

Claims and Response Handling

The bureau prepares claims with the aim of reducing errors and rejections. It decides which claims can go out electronically so payment arrives faster, and it prints and mails the rest. Its services include:

• Electronic filing to Blue Cross, Blue Care Network, the Federal Employee Program and Medicare
• Paper claims mailed on the therapist's behalf, with a summary of clients, service dates, procedures, charges and payers
• Turning HIPAA-standard response files from Blue Cross into readable reports that often stand in for paper explanation of benefits forms
• Routing responses for Medicare, Michigan Medicaid and other carriers through the bureau when this can be arranged, sometimes by getting remittances through Availity
• Answering questions about remittance advices that therapists receive directly from insurers and fax to the office

These reports show clinicians which payments went to which client accounts and which service dates, and why any claim was rejected. The firm also publishes a series of numbered flyers that explain its procedures and the reports clients receive.

What Sets It Apart

White Crane stands out for its narrow focus on behavioral health, its decades of payer approvals and an owner who is himself a licensed psychologist. It is a good fit for therapists who want low-cost, low-effort billing support. The company also offers a free downloadable guide to diagnostic and procedure codes for therapists, and it reminds clients to hide identifying patient details in ordinary email correspondence.