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Amber Espey manages billing for 2 clinic locations at Coltman & Baughman Physical Therapy (CBPT), a sports and orthopedic practice that sees roughly 2,000 visits a month. Before Prompt RCM Services, she was the only person who could answer a billing question, on 2 distinct systems that didn't talk to each other. Now, 99% of the revenue her clinic is owed gets consistently collected in a fraction of the time it used to take her.
Since switching to Prompt RCM Services, Amber's team has been able to:
- Collect 99% of collectible revenue consistently, instead of the "ebbs and flows" of the old process
- Cut the time she spends managing patient balances from 20+ hours a month to about 1.5-2 hours
- Catch missing prior authorizations before a claim goes out, instead of working the denial after the fact
- Charge cards on file and send refunds the same day, instead of waiting for a quarterly review
One biller, 2 disconnected systems, no room to grow
Before Prompt RCM Services, the clinic ran 2 separate systems: Their EMR, and their billing system. Information would flow from the EMR to the billing system, but there wasn’t bidirectional flow, and nothing from the billing system came back to the EMR.
As Amber put it, "the billing system information and balances for patients, denials, et cetera, those things didn't flow back over to the EMR. So all of that kind of stuff had to be manually entered in our EMR by me."
That manual work extended to patient balances. Amber had to download a PDF statement, upload it into the EMR, add the charge, then email patients from the clinic's own Google Workspace account with instructions on how to pay. "The process typically took me 20+ hours each month to do all of those things," she said.
It also meant Amber was the only person who could answer a billing question. "I was the only person with access to the billing system. I was the only person that really understood the billing system," she said. "So our front office team had to wait basically for me to get back to give them an answer." That made her a single point of failure, which aside from not being sustainable, was preventing their growth.
CBPT was planning to open a 3rd clinic location, and Amber says the math didn't work with the setup they had. "It wasn't going to be viable for us to add a 3rd location and that additional volume without going back to full service billing that levies a team approach," she said. As she put it plainly: "I couldn’t continue with the current solution and additional volume."
The turnaround: More revenue, less time, room to grow
For Amber, the switch paid off in 2 ways: More revenue collected, and far less time spent collecting it. "Basically, 99% of what we could collect in revenue is now being collected, and it's being collected consistently," Amber said.
99% of what we could collect in revenue is now being collected, and it's being collected consistently.
Much of that comes from Prompt's RCM team taking on the work that used to fall to Amber. The Prompt RCM team reviews claims for accuracy before submission, works denials through to resolution, follows up with payers on stalled claims, and posts payments as they come in. Amber's role has shifted from doing that work to reviewing it. What used to be a 20+ hour-a-month process now takes about 1.5 to 2 hours total for both locations.
The software handles the rest. Balances populate automatically at check-in, so most of what's owed gets collected at time of service instead of through a statement later. Payer-level rules in Prompt won't let a claim go out without a required prior authorization, which catches issues before they become denials.
With Prompt's RCM Services team carrying the day-to-day billing work, the practice no longer depends on 1 person to keep revenue flowing. That cleared the blocker Amber described: A 3rd clinic location the practice can now grow into instead of straining to support.
Why they chose Prompt
Amber's team looked for a partner that would work with their existing workflows instead of asking them to change how they operated. "Prompt was allowing for a lot of flexibility and some customization," she said. "We weren't really finding anybody else that was kind of willing to work with, 'okay, here's what we wanna do with our workflow.'" They also wanted a fully onshore team and software that was genuinely all-in-one, with integrations that worked consistently, something they hadn't found anywhere else they evaluated.
A go-live with no surprises, and a team that stuck around
Before go-live, Amber's team and Prompt's worked through a shared Asana project that laid out exactly which responsibilities belonged to the clinic and which belonged to Prompt, including the specific EDI and ERA setup the clinic needed so payments stayed separated by location. The clinic wound down its previous billing system over 90 days rather than cutting over all at once. The result: No negative impact to reimbursement from the first go-live date forward.
Amber credits the smooth transition to the whole Prompt RCM team, not just 1 point of contact. In their first meeting, the team offered to meet weekly and walk through every workflow before scaling back as things stabilized: "You kinda go through a process where you have a meeting every week, and then you go to a meeting every 2 weeks, and then eventually, when everyone agrees, that you're on track, you sorta switch to having a meeting once a month, but the team is always there if you need them."
I feel confident in the Prompt team. I can tell that they're doing what they say they're doing and what they say they're gonna do.
That was a shift from her previous billing vendor, where "the team constantly changed" and, as she put it, "it was difficult to get in touch with people." With Prompt, she said, "I feel confident in the Prompt team, and we've been working together now for several months. And so as I've been watching, I can tell that they're doing what they say they're doing and what they say they're gonna do." That confidence has let her back off on overseeing billing herself.
Her advice to other growing practices
"I would certainly recommend Prompt RCM Services to any practice that really wants to focus on growth and be able to spend more time on their patients and less time fighting with payers and collecting money," Amber said. "The Prompt team makes the money collection pretty seamless."
If you're curious about how Prompt’s RCM Services can help your practice, schedule time with an expert today.
