FREE Electronic Claims Through Clinic Pro Software
Clinic Pro Medical Software submits electronic claims FREE to Medicare and BCBS whenever possible. There are no clearinghouse fees when you bill direct.  Whether electronic claims can be sent free in your state depends on BCBS and Medicare in your state.  Ask our sales representative.   If free claims are not available, we can transfer claims via a number of different clearinghouses. Electronic claims:  it's up to you how you want to send them.

Electronic Claims -- The "Bottom Line" Answer
Unless you operate a cash practice, you cannot collect 100% of your fees. That is a fact of life. Unfortunately, most chiropractic physicians cannot afford to operate a cash practice so they are forced by economic reality to submit insurance claims. To survive as a businessperson, you must maximize your insurance reimbursement while minimizing the costs of collecting that same reimbursement. Filing insurance claims electronically can substantially reduce the collection costs and create a healthier bottom line.

There are three major cost advantages of electronic claim submission:
 

1. Less cost per claim. There is an automatic "fixed cost" per claim when filing hardcopy claims. Even if the computer prints your hardcopy claims so that they are not being typed individually, the costs add up quickly. Each hardcopy claim requires computer time, printer supplies and paper or the HCFA form itself. These supplies are relatively inexpensive, about .07/claim. However, when you add the labor costs required getting HCFA forms ready for mailing (preparing the printer, folding, stuffing envelopes, filing), the costs accumulate quickly to an estimate of 65/claim. Once you add postage at.33/claim, the average hardcopy claim costs to $1.00- $1.50 to send. If you get reimbursed $50.00 on your $80.00 claim, it has cost 3% to 4% of your reimbursement to collect your money. Of course, this scenario assumes that there were no errors and that the insurance company pays your original claim. If the original claim gets rejected, the cost of collecting your money escalates. Let’s assume that your office is very efficient and that it only costs .60/claim to file hardcopy. Using this conservative estimate: 500 claims/month x .60 = $300/month. Obviously, the monthly cost increases with each claim because it is a fixed cost. By comparison, unlimited electronic claims can be sent free with the right software or at minimal charge of approximately $25/month. There is no fixed cost per claim when filing electronically – that creates a huge cost differential even for small practices.
    

2. Faster turnaround. Hardcopy Medicare claims are held for 27 days from the day they were received; electronic Medicare claims are processed in 14 days. Likewise, there is a similar difference in turnaround time for commercial carriers. A quicker turnaround means that the money received could be invested; money that is invested draws dividends or interest. In simple economic terms, that is the "time value" of money. By allowing insurance carriers to hold your money for two to four weeks longer, they earn the interest -- not you. Because this cost is intangible, it is more difficult to calculate. On a monthly income of $20,000, the cost of lost interest income could range between $100 - $300/month.
    

3. Immediate feedback on edit/rejections. There is nothing more frustrating than waiting six weeks for payment of a hardcopy claim only to find that it was rejected due to a clerical error. Then, the process begins again. You have to create a corrected paper claim (incurring the same fixed costs as the original) and wait another six weeks (allowing the insurance company to earn more interest on your money.) With electronic claims, you can usually receive feedback on the status of the claims within 24 hours. If a claim contains errors that will cause rejections, it can be immediately corrected and re-submitted. No wasted time, no duplication of effort. The cost of rejections fits into the intangible category since it incorporates both of the costs above.
    

Most practitioners accept the premise that filing for insurance reimbursement is an economic reality; the method of claim submission becomes the question. Take a moment to crunch through the numbers for your office. We have prepared two very conservative estimates of cost depending on the volume of monthly claims. If you actually calculated the cost of filing hardcopy claims, it would probably be much higher than the following figures:
 

 Electronic claim submission is very efficient: it is the "bottom line" answer for most medical or chiropractic offices.   It is the key to effective practice management software.