How to make your billing company less dependent on you

Try this test. If you went into the hospital for three weeks tomorrow, what would happen to your clients’ claims? If that answer worries you, it’d worry a buyer as well, and your clients would probably feel the same.

All of the steps below make the business easier to sell, and they also make it safer to run if you never sell it. You can do most of them a little at a time.

Write down what’s in your head

You don’t need a binder of formal procedures. Start with one page per client:

• Which EHR, clearinghouse and payers they use
• Who to call at the practice, and who actually answers
• Which claims need special handling, and why
• What you’ve learned the hard way, such as the payer who only accepts corrected claims by portal
• Their billing day, and when they expect their report

Then write up your own routine, covering what you do daily, weekly and at month end. A person with billing experience should be able to follow it. Test that by giving it to someone and watching where they get stuck.

Get the logins in order

List every system and whose name each login’s in. Accounts that belong to the practice should be in the practice’s name, and you should each have your own named login. If you’ve got a password book in a drawer, move it to a proper password manager, so someone can get in when you can’t.

Introduce clients to someone else

This takes the longest and it’s worth the most. If every call comes to you, every client is really your client, and a buyer knows they might leave when you do.

Have someone else start sending the monthly report, answer routine questions and join calls with you. If you don’t have staff, a trusted part time biller can do some of it. After a while the client gets used to more than one person handling their account.

Make your numbers easy to read

Set up your books so that fees by client come out in one report. Keep business and personal spending apart. Use the same reports every month, because they’ll give you a trend to show a buyer, and they’ll show you things too. A 2021 HBMA article by a broker says revenue growth carries more weight with buyers than profit, and that services such as credentialing and coding can add value.

Reduce your reliance on any one client

That article treats more than 25% of revenue from one client as a risk a buyer will want to share. You can’t fix that quickly, but if one practice dominates your revenue, you may want to take on smaller clients or add services for the others.

Put your agreements on paper

Get a current contract and Business Associate Agreement in place with every client. Our guide to client contracts explains what to look for, and this is much easier to do before you’ve decided to sell.

Take a real vacation

Once you’ve done some of this, go away for two weeks and don’t check in. Whatever goes wrong while you’re gone is your next list of things to fix. When a buyer asks what happens without you, you’ll have a real answer for them.

Fieldstone may be a buyer in a sale like this, so read this guide with that in mind. It's general information, and it isn't legal or tax advice.