Medical Billing Companies & Consultants in Bend, OR

The Central Oregon Independent Practice Association, usually called COIPA, is based in Bend and exists to support clinicians and clinics that remain independently owned. The association reports that its coverage area is about 40,000 square miles, extending through central Oregon and into neighboring regions.

More than 120 independent practices participate in the network, and the number of individual members exceeds 750. Member practices range from one-clinician offices to large groups offering many specialties. Physicians, nurse practitioners and nurse midwives all belong, as do professionals who provide integrated behavioral health care.

Billing and Revenue Cycle

COIPA's billing team works to ensure that clinicians are paid correctly and without delay, so that front-office staff can spend more of their time on patients. Careful, streamlined handling of each stage between a patient visit and final payment shapes the team's approach, and every arrangement is adapted to the money goals of the specific practice.

Member clinics can draw on this support. The association has also opened its billing expertise to certain non-member practices working in alternative and complementary medicine, offering adaptable terms to these licensed professions:

• Physical therapists (PT)
• Occupational therapists (OT)
• Naturopathic doctors (ND)
• Chiropractors (DC)
• Licensed acupuncturists (LAc)
• Licensed massage therapists (LMT)

Enrollment, Credentialing and Consulting

Several related administrative services sit alongside billing. COIPA helps clinics get admitted to insurer networks so that payments are not stalled. The team takes care of enrollment paperwork for both individual clinicians and facilities with many different insurers, and it tracks each file through to completion for the practice.

COIPA also holds formal recognition as an organization that checks the qualifications of clinicians, and it confirms provider backgrounds and processes credential files for a variety of healthcare organizations. Peer review and contract negotiation, however, fall outside that role. Its advisory work covers everything from opening a new clinic to improving how an existing one runs.

The association further offers personnel and HR guidance, along with tuning of Epic and other electronic health record systems.

Team and Credentials

The staff is led by Chief Executive Officer Richard Booth, who holds an MHA. Three team members work as Billing Specialist II, one of whom is a Certified Professional Coder. Credentialing is supervised by a senior specialist with both CPCS and RHCS designations.

The remaining staff includes a director of clinical applications, an Epic support specialist, a patient access analyst, a care manager, an HR generalist and an IT systems administrator. Finance is covered by part-time controller and CFO roles. As a group, the employees bring experience in healthcare administration, clinical quality, managed care contracts and provider credentialing.

Governance and Approach

A board of directors governs the association. Board members are physicians and associate members working across central Oregon and the Columbia Gorge. They serve three-year terms, with a limit of two terms. Permanent committees cover executive matters, managed care contracts, credentialing, and quality, values and outcomes. COIPA frames its mission around teamwork, new ideas and speaking up for independent clinicians.

Its stated values are clinician wellness, local community partnerships, medicine grounded in evidence, and openness and integrity. The association is also connected to the COHQA Foundation.

For organizations evaluating billing vendors, COIPA stands out as a provider-run regional network that combines billing with credential checks, insurer enrollment and practice operations help, rather than a company that offers billing and nothing else.

Swift Medical Billing is an outsourced revenue cycle firm that runs as Swift Medical Solutions, LLC (Swift MDS LLC in its privacy policy). Its main office is in Bend, Oregon, and it has a second office in Los Angeles, California. The company takes over the billing work of physician practices and other healthcare providers. Its stated goal is to let clinicians spend their time on patients while it handles insurance claims, payments and the administrative work in between.

Services for practices

The firm can manage a practice's whole revenue cycle or just individual parts of it. That work runs from assigning codes and sending claims out promptly, to preventing denials, chasing unpaid balances and enrolling providers with payers. Its main service lines are:

• Physician billing with daily claim handling and steady follow-up
• Full revenue cycle management and outsourced billing
• Denial management and recovery of aging accounts receivable
• Billing audits, including a free audit for prospective clients
• Credentialing and payer enrollment for providers
• Mental health billing and billing for Spravato treatment
• A virtual front desk to handle office administration remotely
• Chronic care management support

Specialties served

Swift works with a wide range of clinical fields: internal medicine, family medicine, pediatrics, pain management, dermatology, surgery, endocrinology, sports medicine, neurology, orthopedics, gynecology and obstetrics, radiology and imaging, and preventive care. It also serves chiropractors and physical therapists, as well as behavioral and mental health providers. For mental health clients, the company says it covers practitioners nationwide. It also handles workers' compensation and auto injury claims, which have their own paperwork and payer rules.

How it works with clients

Small practices get particular attention from the company. These are offices that larger billing vendors may overlook or charge too much. A prospective client usually starts with a free billing evaluation or audit, which shows where revenue is being lost before any long-term arrangement begins.

Swift says it can work inside the systems practices already use, such as eClinicalWorks, NextGen and other major platforms. Its site also includes a security protocol section, an FAQ and a downloadable white paper for practices weighing whether to outsource.

What sets it apart

Swift's marketing focuses on higher collections, fewer denials and tighter control of receivables. It says it can lift practice revenue by around a fifth and reach collection ratios near ninety percent. Client testimonials on the site describe the team clearing a three-month billing backlog and recovering claims that a former vendor had wrongly written off.

Clients also say its audits found problems they hadn't known about. Other reviewers mention a smooth credentialing process and personal attention from the owner and staff. For buyers comparing vendors, Swift offers broad specialty coverage, credentialing and front-office support under one roof, and offices in both Oregon and California.