A key to survival for many independent physicians in southeastern Wisconsin may lie within the technology created by Dominion Medical Management Inc.
The Mequon-based provider of revenue cycle management capabilities for hospital-based physicians recently launched its new division, ProSperus, which takes a nearly 20-year-old technology and applies it to the clinics of independent physicians.
“ProSperus really offers independent physicians a full suite of services and software that will allow them to do what they do best, which is spend more time with patients,” said Tom McBride, chief executive officer of ProSperus. “Our products can allow them to do more procedures, thus increasing the revenues of the practice, by not having the hardships and the burden of dealing with the back office.”
The solution is based on Dominion Medical Management technology known as revenue cycle management software. The basics of the software have been in existence for 19 years, but the independent physician need for this technology was identified around a year and half ago through discussions with the Independent Physicians Network (IPN) of Wisconsin and other similar organizations across the nation, McBride said.
“Our job as the Independent Physicians Network is really to support those physicians and provide them with a multitude of things they may need,” said Michael Repka, executive director and chief executive officer of IPN. “We knew there was a need for a practice management component and we started looking to form a relationship with a company that uses technology to make things more efficient and can help reduce costs for physicians.”
“The field of play is no longer level,” said Dr. Ajit Parekh, an independent Cudahy physician who specializes in pulmonary diseases and critical care and serves as medical director of the Independent Physicians Network. “Smaller physician operations are faced with heavy financial burdens and upfront costs when it comes to competing with the larger organizations and government compliance laws and regulations.”
Parekh and his colleagues are in discussions with ProSperus to determine what the company and the Reinsurance Software could provide for their practice. He is hopeful that the ProSperus services will be attractive to many practices.
The service is designed to allows physician offices to use as little or as much of the service as they need. According to McBride, the solution begins with the proper installation and integration of the software with the clinic’s electronic medical record system. For firms that don’t have electronic medical records, ProSperus is a cost-effective and efficient way to begin that transition process, McBride said.
The physician can then choose which administrative services they want to turn over to ProSperus. The company is capable of maintaining the billing and collection services of a clinic, running practice analytics on the clinic and its improvements, administrative staffing and training, insurance verifications, scheduling and registration, certified coding and credentialing services.
In addition, ProSperus is able to provide those components of service and others at a competitive base cost, McBride said.
The plan, according to William Pickart, chairman of ProSperus, was to provide for best-of-class service at or below market rates.
“The physicians are very skilled at running the clinical side of the practice, we like to think we are equally skilled on the business management side,” Pickart said. “The concept was to offer them a menu that to the extent that they took more of the menu or less they could outsource almost the entire if not the entire business functions of the clinics. It’s a collaborative effort to improve the standing of the physician.”
Dr. Noemi Prieto, an independent physician for Southeastern Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine, will be one of the physicians to take advantage of ProSperus offerings.
“Prosperus brings quality, compliance and efficiency to the back room of the practices, so that the billing and reimbursements can be done in a more time efficient manner,” Prieto said. “The billing service will be the first service I decide to undertake; the good thing about ProSperus is you can add from the menu slowly so the transition is done more smoothly depending on your needs and sizes.”
According to Prieto, the relationships her firm has with IPN and ProSperus will help alleviate some of the fears she has about staying independent in today’s market.
Prosperus is currently in discussion with several independent physicians who are attracted to the management model. However, they will not have any installations up and running until October.
“We think we’ve got a winner here in terms of providing support to this marketplace,” McBride said. “Above everything, these doctors would much rather be independent, so we decided we should get behind them and brand our product and services through them.”
