DALLAS – Roughly 70 percent of the nation’s physicians work in a small practice, defined as having 10 or fewer doctors on staff. And many of them don’t have billing software.
“They’ve got their brother-in-law, their sister or their aunt doing the billing,” said Joel Anderson, vice president of marketing and business development at St. Louis-based Purkinje, Inc. “As a result, they’re struggling to survive.”
Purkinje, which offers a suite of solutions that address practice management, electronic health records, personal health records and electronic prescribing, rolled out a new tool for physicians at last month’s Towards the Electronic Patient Record (TEPR) conference in Dallas. Called CareSeries Plus, it’s a full billing service solution added onto the company’s CareSeries product, allowing physicians and small- to medium-sized practices one source for both clinical and billing and A/R needs.
Anderson says Purkinje realized the importance of combining its hosted clinical solution with a billing solution after talking to a physician who was struggling to keep his practice afloat.
“We realized there were a lot more doctors out there who were having the same problems,” he said. “They needed help” managing finances.
And while CareSeries Plus is just now being rolled out, roughly 40 percent of Purkinje’s CareSeries customers are already using the product, he said. New customers, in fact, get free access to the CareSeries package.
Yatin Shah, MD, a doctor with Primary Care Joliet, a three-office practice in Joliet, Ill. that cares for 25,000 patients, said CareSeries Plus helped save the practice $40,000 in operating costs in one year.
“(It) has had an extremely positive impact on our clinical and administrative workflow as well as our accounts receivable,” he said in a press release.
David L. Fairbrook, MD, said the Clinic at Panorama City, a primary care facility that serves 6,000 patients in Lacey, Wash., had considered closing its doors because of problems with a previous billing service provider. In using CareSeries Plus, he said, the facility saved enough money to give its staff pay raises.
“The CareSeries Plus program was developed to provide customers a one-stop solution for both their clinical and billing needs,” said Purkinje CEO Bryan Dieter. CareSeries Plus “reduces administrative cost, maximizes income and creates an environment where physicians can focus of providing optimal patient care.”