MedFeeTree: Connecting Healthcare Providers and Billers on an Open-Market Bidding Platform for Faster Claims Resolution

Follow MedFeeTree on :

Courtney Starnes, Chief Digital Innovation Officer

The US healthcare industry is worth a stately $4 trillion. However, the aging accounts and the bad debt actually represent about 10 percent of that total healthcare spends, which equates to a whopping $400 billion loss. The complexities involved in settling the old accounts receivable (AR)make most healthcare providers dissuadetheir billing staff from spending valuable time and efforts in recovering old medical claims and instead urge them to focus on newer claims, thereby resultingin massive revenue loss. Moreover, healthcare practitioners and hospitals transitioning to different electronic medical reports (EMR) systems also require medical billers with specialized skills in settling aging accounts that might not be available within their in-house billing teams.In turn, freelance medical billers also need a platform to offer their billing expertise to a wide pool of healthcare providers.

As the former president of a revenue cycle management company handling medical billing for long-term care facilities, Cory Boyle noticed this gap between healthcare providers and billers. This led him to launch MedFeeTree, where he currently serves as the president. The open-market bidding application bridges the gap between healthcare providers struggling with aging AR recovery and settlement and freelance medical billers seeking to offer their specialized billing expertiseacross medical specialties. “We enable healthcare providers to capture revenue that would otherwise be written off, and help medical billers find specialized claims collection work,” says Courtney Starnes, Chief Digital Innovation Officer at MedFeeTree, who brings to the company her experience as a former CIO in healthcare facilities dealing with biller talent retention and medical accounts payment issues.

MedFeeTreeoffers healthcare providers a freelance model of contracting billers instead of relying on third-party billing entities.However, Starnes asserts that MedFeeTree is not a collection agency or a third-party billing company. “MedFeeTree is essentially the rideshare of healthcare revenue cycle,” she remarks. makes MedFeeTree stand apart in the world of healthcare revenue cycle management. Also, by helping settle older claims and accounts, MedFeeTree frees up the internal billers of hospitals and healthcare facilities to focus on resolving newer medical claims.

MedFeeTree’seasy-to-use web app enables medical practitioners and hospitals to create billing projects to recover older claims, regulate their aging AR accounts, and et immediate access to certifiedbillers with expertise in settling aging medical accounts. The app comes with free registration for healthcare providers and billers. The providers can login to the platform and enter information about their practice and specialty, while the billers can provide their locations, certifications, and specializations, which are all verified by MedFeeTree. The network of registered billers is accessible to registered healthcare providers on the app. Once billing projectsare posted on the app platform by medical practice managers or billing managers on behalf of the providers, billers on the platform start bidding on them along with showcasing their commission rates. The provider then reviews the billers’ resume and ratings and chooses a biller that matches their projecter quirements.

We enable healthcare providers to capture revenue that would otherwise be written off, and help medical billers find specialized freelance claims collection work

Once the biller is awarded the project, the healthcare provider parks the biller’s commission amount in an escrow account on the MedFeeTree app. The chosen biller then completes the claims collection process within the stipulated deadline set by the provider, following which the latter receives remittance from the payers. In the final step of project completion, the commission gets released from the escrow account to the biller, with MedFeeTree charging a small administrative fee from the biller’s commission. Additionally, the app also allows providers to seamlessly and automatically switch to a new biller in case the initial biller fails to deliver satisfactorily.

As a plus, the app’s chatbot feature offers customer support from MedFeeTree’s administrative personnel at all times. “We are offering more of a white glove assistancein creating billing projects,helping providers manage and upload them, and working to automate the process,” adds Starnes.

Launchedaround six months ago, MedFeeTree’s app has already found a number of satisfied customers in healthcare providers looking to transition across EMRs. Starnes recounts an orthopedic care providerthat was gearing up to switch to a new EMR seeking MedFeeTree’s services to find billers to settle their old AR accounts. Within hours, MedFeeTree’s app helped them connect with specialized orthopedic billers, who settled the provider’s old accounts within 60 days. In another instance, a radiology group found a biller to settle their old accounts on MedFeeTree’s platform, but had to let the billergo owing to theirslow pace of work.The platform automatically transferred the billing project to the next biller on the client’s preference list along with all collection notes and payer portal info, who started operation within 48 hours and collected the group’s revenue in 90 days.
Having achieved such impressive results within a year of founding, MedFeeTree is looking forward to providingits services to wider markets. To that end, they have launched their app in the Amazon Marketplace, partnered with industry-leading EMR AdvancedMD, and are in the process of integrating with Epic Systems, the leading EMR utilized by the majority of US hospitals and healthcare systems. “Our goal is to be integrated with all EMRs, so that healthcare providers and hospitals can post projects directly with the click of a button instead of having to manually load that information,” informs Starnes. Going forward, MedFeeTree will continually strive to fine-tune, simplify, and advance their platform based on user feedback to further enrich revenue cycle management in the healthcare sector.

Top 50 Healthcare Solutions Companies - 2022

Company
MedFeeTree

Management
Courtney Starnes, Chief Digital Innovation Officer

Description
MedFeeTree is an open-market bidding application that connects healthcare providers with medical billers to capture claims that would otherwise go unpaid. It offers healthcare providers a freelance model of contracting billers instead of relying on third-party billing entities. MedFeeTree’s web application enables medical practitioners and hospitals to create billing projects to recover older claims, regulate their aging AR accounts, and get immediate access to certified billers with expertise in settling aging medical accounts. By helping settle older claims and accounts, MedFeeTree frees up the internal billers of hospitals and healthcare facilities to focus on resolving newer medical claims