CureMD Medical Billing Services review

Headquartered in the US in New York, CureMD can trace its origin back to 1997 when Bill Hashmat founded this company with his colleagues. Today it boasts a global presence, across multiple continents serving over 30,000 clinical practices, with over 123,000 users nationwide in the US with their cloud based EHR.

• You can learn more about CureMD Billing Services here

Features

CureMD is a capable EHR, and their Medical Billing Service is an extension of that. Realizing that just like each medical specialty has its own nuances in practice, their billing offering gets optimized for over 32 medical specialties, rather than a ‘One size fits none’ approach.

Once a progressive novelty, claims scrubbing has become an essential service in modern billing. This process will analyze claims, prior to submission, and each gets each optimized to ensure that there is no reason for the claim to bounce out and require a resubmission. While an astute biller or office manager could accomplish this years ago, these days, with so many payers and types of claims, each with their own set of unique rules, it has become a bit of a shifting minefield of rules and regulations, too often stacked against the clinicians, with the insurance carrier holding all the cards. 

CureMD incorporates claims scrubbing, with no less than 4 million rules that get applied to each claim, in order to have it analyzed to facilitate timely payment for the claim, and on the first submission attempt. CureMD boasts that 96% of their submitted claims get paid on the initial submission. Also, rest assured that if the claim does require an additional submission, then CureMD will not only handle the resubmission on their end, but also analyze the reason for denial, and incorporate a new rule into their database. This then prevents this particular denial from happening again, and also helps all the CureMD clients from experiencing the same issue repeatedly.

The CureMD services go beyond claims scrubbing, and can handle all kinds of complicated billing issues that inevitably arise in any busy practice. These include recovery for old accounts receivables, secondary insurance billing, extensive insurance follow up, and denial review management. Additionally, the more routine issues can also be handled, such as insurance eligibility checks, charge entry for all specialties, posting of insurance and patient payments, and processing of patient statements, including mailing them.

Taken in aggregate, these services combine to produce some impressive results. CureMD indicates that they can track every dollar billed, and have zero ICD-10 disruptions This then produces a significant lessening in accounts receivables denials with less days to get paid, and a 5% to 10% increase in collections over the first few months of transitioning to this service.

Drawbacks

One drawback is that CureMD is particular to which browser is used, with users indicating they are limited to only using Internet Explorer only. Others complain about the software being glitchy, and the inability to complete tasks. Still others indicate that the speed of CureMD is slow, which can hamper the workflow, and cannot keep up with a busy session of office hours, with a speed bump in entering lab orders. The sales process also garners complaints, with folks being upsold to services they do not truly need. Finally, the billing department is less than responsive at dealing with customer issues.

Support

CureMD does have a choice of methods for contact in order for users to be able to ask questions, and obtain support. The first includes via telephone, with a pair of toll numbers listed (curiously, sales provides an 800 number), both located in the New York City area. The next includes an email address, and the last is via instant message support. Unfortunately, the hours are limited to 8:30 AM to 8:30 PM on weekdays for the phone and IM options. Finally, there is the option, preferred by the company over email, to use the online portal to submit a trouble ticket.

In those off hours, while there are still plenty of options available for users, they are unfortunately of the self-help variety. These range from white papers, to blogs, to streaming videos and FAQ’s.

Pricing

The pricing is not forthcoming on their website, with more of an invitation to provide your contact information, and sales will be in touch to sell it to you. There is unfortunately no indication what the costs will be on their website.

At least it is indicated that there are no upfront or startup costs. There is also no cost for training, and no server installation as CureMD is hosted via the cloud. A free trial is offered to help in the decision making process.

Further searching off site suggests that the CureMD EHR system has a cost of $295 (£227) per provider monthly. The CureMD Practice Management system runs $195 (£150) per provider monthly if taken separately, or $395 (£304) when bundled with the EHR. The billing services are not included in those amounts, and have a cost of 5% of collections to outsource the billing component

Final verdict

CureMD Medical Billing Services is a logical extension of the CureMD EHR platform. The pluses include a choice of support options, an app for the iOS mobile platform, and an aggressive claims scrubbing process. This needs to be counterbalanced against the negatives of a lack of an Android app, the less than forthcoming pricing, and the higher cost of the product. While CureMD Medical Billing Services is worthy extension for those already happy with this EHR platform, others should take advantage of the free trial offer to make a quality decision if this platform suits their needs.

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