A Case Study In Doubling Income

Introducing Amy N.

Amy N. is Manhattan based psychotherapist who has maintained a successful practice for the past 25 years. Amy ’s needs were straight forward. She used Google Calendar for scheduling, QuickBooks for private-pay billing, OneNote for handwritten patient notes (on her tablet PCs), Availity to submit insurance claims, MS Word to create statements for her insurance patients, and OneDrive to share files between her mid-town and upper-westside offices. Although each tool was "right for the job", Amy found herself having to repeatedly enter the same information in multiple apps (once for an appointment, again for insurance billing, again for patient notes, and yet again for a patient’s statement). Between the time necessary to enter information, correcting any entry mistakes, resubmitting insurance claims (up to 4 times in some cases), Amy spent almost as much time trying to organize her practice as she did seeing patients… and she still didn’t have a clear picture of her practice’s performance nor her patients’ balances!

The Solution - IBEX

In 2017, Amy met with Harrison Consulting, Inc. to discuss options that would organize her practice with the least amount of commitment in terms of her time and data entry. After evaluating several 3rd party billers and practice management solutions, we concluded that IBEX satisfied all of the practice’s current and future needs and, because IBEX works on a commissions-based model, it was the most cost-effective solution.

For the next few weeks, Amy and Harrison gathered information such as procedure code rates for in-network insurance carriers, billing rates for each of Amy’s private-pay patients, and reconciled patient balances. Harrison then contracted all Amy’s Patients’ insurance providers to make EFT (electronic fund transfer) deposits directly to Amy’s bank account (as even out-of-network insurance would be billed). At the start of 2018, IBEX went live.

The Success Story

At the start of 2019, after a full year of running IBEX, Amy and Harrison decided to compare Year on Year gross revenue. For fiscal year 2017, Amy had an income of $112,000. For 2018, that figure almost doubled to $222,000.

The secret to this success is how IBEX allowed for Amy’s clinical work to pay off. IBEX allows Amy to enter (and only once) the information that only she is privy to (e.g., patient information, handwritten patient notes, appointments, procedures, billing rates for private-pay, etc.) and Harrison takes care of the rest (claim submissions, appointment and overdue balance reminders, remittance processing, accepting online payments, reconciling patient balances, etc.). By offloading the lion’s share of bureaucracy onto Harrison, Amy more than doubled her time to see patients.

- P.S., Amy broke the $240,000 mark for fiscal year 2022.