Click below to watch yesterday’s webinar, presented by Patrick Phillips, Founder of American Business Systems. This week, he gives the top ten reasons why someone would want to start a medical billing business, and why they would want to let the ABS medical billing training program be the one to put them on top.
Webinar Transcript:
For those who could not be here today, this is live. But, for those of you who are listening to the recording right now, of course, are able to listen but not ask questions. However, those of you who are on here live today, Charlotte, Claudia, David, Jerry, Lee, Marie, Peter, Ryan, Susan, Bob, Anne, and a bunch of others. All of you are able to ask questions when the webinar is close to the end, here. So, I’ll try to get through all the material I have to present to you today within an hour, and whenever we wrap up I’m going to open it up for questions and let you ask me anything you want about medical billing as a business, about our business, ABS, or anything else you want to.
So, you’ll notice down at the bottom of your screen there is a phone number, and you’ll also see that in the little control panel at the right there, if for some reason something happens to your computer and you can’t hear clearly enough, you might want to just call in and put us on speaker phone. Everybody is on mute, anyway, so just put it on speaker phone and listen over the phone, if that’s what you need to do.
Alright let me get started here by introducing myself. My name is Patrick Phillips. I’m the founder of American Business Systems, and I want to tell you just a little bit about the company itself, and what we’re doing to help build awareness of what’s going on in the medical billing industry. We started back in 1987, and I’m going to show, first of all, a picture of a couple books I’ve written. If you want to verify who I am, just go out to Amazon.com, or any major book store will have these books. I wrote a couple of books. “How to Reprogram Yourself for Success,” and also one called “Cash Crunch to Cash Flow: How to Get Money in Your Professional Practice and Plug the Leaks that are Draining Profits.”
My wife, Linda, is there in the picture you see on the screen right now, along with my son, Adam, and Sarah, my daughter. Linda started doing medical billing back in 1987, and this was back when medical claims were still done on paper, and not done electronically in any way. Now, we have a leading edge technology that allows you to do all this medical billing over the web from any computer that’s web enabled. That is, it has an internet connection and a browser.
So, we’ve come a long way. My son, now, is 35 years old with three children, and my daughter is married with one child. It’s still a family business, though, and we’re intimately involved in the day-to-day operations. Of making sure that everybody that gets into our business becomes as successful as they will allow themselves to be. That’s the best way to put that. A lot of people have goals, some much higher than others, and that’s OK. This business allows you to work from home, any way you want to. We do offer live training workshops down here.
We’re actually holding one this week here in Dallas, and the next one coming up is toward the end of February, as you can see. February 27th through March 2nd. That’s a Monday through Friday. So, you fly in on Sunday evening and stay at the Marriott Springhill Suites, in Grapevine, Texas. Then, we start Monday morning at 8 o’clock, and go all the way to Friday at about 1 o’clock, when we wrap up to give you enough time to get home for the weekend. So, be sure to take note of that. If you’d like to come down and learn more about what we do, we do offer a 100% money back guarantee, and I’ll tell you about that toward the end of the webinar.
#1 – Medical Billing is A Growth Industry
Let’s get right into the subject today, though. The top ten reasons why medical billing is the perfect business. I’ve looked at a lot of businesses, folks. I’m what you might refer to as a serial entrepreneur. That’s right. I’ve just gone from one thing to the other over the years. Until my wife started this business, I didn’t realize how good this business actually was. But, here’s the number one reason. It’s because medical billing is a growth industry. Health care is a $25 billion industry. That is, $25 billion was spent last year processing over 3 billion insurance claims. That’s a lot of claims, and a lot of money.
All you have to do is get a small part of that $25 billion, and you’ll be making a very nice executive income. Here’s an article from September 7th of last year, saying “US job growth is stalled, but,” and this is a big but here, “health care hiring continues to rise.” Isn’t that good news? While the US economy experiences practically no job growth, the health care center continued to buck the national trend, as the industry added 29,700 physicians. So, folks, this is definitely a business with a future. In fact, here’s an article in a recent health care and billing management association magazine called “Where is Our Industry Headed?” It said that this industry growth for the medical billing industry, specifically, is just under 6% per year.
Now, compare that to some industries that are in the negative numbers, and you’ll see that this is one of the best sectors in a weak economic environment. In fact, here’s a little chart showing health care spending in the US as a percentage of our grossed domestic product. Look at this. Listen, any business you get into where the trend is in this direction, that’s a good business to be in. Here’s another pie chart that shows how big it is in dollars. Out of all the medical management technology opportunities out there in the US, physician medical billing, it says, is a $9 billion industry. Of course, you’ll be doing billing, not for the hospitals, but for the office based physicians. But, that’s one half of the pie. That’s $4.5 billion. So, it’s a great business to be in.
In fact, the US government actually says on their website, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the billing industry, especially in health care is growing, but the actual on-site jobs will be reduce because the billing is outsourced. This is a good thing, folks. The outsourcing is to you, who has been trained how to handle that billing for the doctors by somebody like American Business Systems.
You’ll be filing insurance claims. If you’ve never seen one, this is the standard form. They call it the CMS1500 form. You know the government has numbers for everything. We’ve filled one out here to show you, but you’re sending these in electronically, over the web. There is no paper involved in this at all. But, sometimes it helps to visualize that that is all the information you need to submit a claim for a doctor to get him paid from Medicare, or some of the insurance companies out there. And, believe me, doctors are always looking to improve their cash flow, because some of them are hurting, as you’ll see in another article I’m going to illustrate here a little bit later.
Here’s another article from Medical Economics. It’s a magazine that we subscribe to, that talks about all the different cash flow problems that doctors have. Look at this quote from this magazine. “If you and your staff don’t know how to submit claims, review EOB’s, or electronic remittance advice notices, bill the secondary insurance, appeal the payment denials, and prod the foot-dragging patients, then you need a billing service.” Look. This is a prominent magazine that’s telling the doctor’s they need a billing service. “Don’t try to do it yourself, doctors. You’ll probably lose money.” Why? Because their staff has a lot of other things to do than sit around filing insurance claims. So, you, as a specialist, take that over and do it for them. Look at this quote. “The health care legislation will provide many people with access to care, but the challenge is getting enough primary care doctors to meet that patient demand.”
Why is that? Here’s one of the reasons, people who are retiring or moving into the health care system. 7000 of these baby boomers, they call them, every single day. So, what will that mean? It’ll mean what the Association of American Medical Colleges says in this quote. “There will be a shortage of 150,000 doctors in the next 15 years. That’s not good news for doctors. I have people ask me all the time about the health care reform, and what that’s going to mean to doctors. Well, I’ll show you one thing. This is a chart that you’ll find hard to believe once you see it here on the screen. This is a real chart from the Secretary of Health and Human Services. See it right there in the middle? Yeah. This is showing how the new health care system will work. This is worrying doctors, because they don’t know how to keep up with all the rules and regulations and paperwork involved in the health care reform. Then, of course, they’re also afraid of the 47 million people in the US who don’t have health care, and will move into the health care system. That will mean doctors have to see that many more patients, meaning that much more of a burden on them and their staff. So, why would they outsource the billing to you? Because they need time to see more patients.
#2 – Billing is Not A Doctor’s Core Competency
Alright. So, that’s reason Number One, as to why this is a great business. Medical billing is a growth industry. Let’s look at reason Number Two. Billing is not a doctor’s core competency. Let that sink in for a minute. Can the doctor do the billing in their own office, with their own staff, their own software, their own computers? Yes. And, many of them do. But, they don’t realize, sometimes, the costs involved in doing that themselves. Look at the difference between doing it in house, a doctor using his own staff, paying his own payroll taxes, workers’ comp insurance, errors and omissions insurance, all these training costs, leaves of absence, benefits, hardware, software, IT support. That’s going to run him about $65,000 a year for a typical doctor. You can do that billing for as little as about $28,800, according to this study right here. And, that means you’re going to make a whole lot of money by doing the billing for the doctors and saving them thousands of dollars at the same time that you make a lot of money. What does that do for the doctor? It frees them up. That’s right. It frees them up to see their patients, which is where they actually make an income, seeing patients and helping them to get well.
Look at this quote. “The industry experts have found that the average number of rejected claims from a medical practice averages around 34%.” Can you imagine? About one out of every three claims that are sent in to the insurance companies and Medicare, come back stamped ‘”Rejected.” That’s right. That’s why doctors are having a real hard time with their cash flow. In fact, look at this quote from Advanced MD. “A single pysician practice can expect an average of 69 rejected claims, per month.” What do you think happens to those 69 rejected claims? They probably go into a drawer somewhere, where some day, some way, they’re going to see fit to resubmit them. Sometimes, those get resubmitted. Sometimes, they just sit around in stacks. And, the office manager doesn’t get to them, why? Because they have a lot of other stuff going on in the doctor’s office. So, those things are kind of put to the side until they can get to them. The sad part is, according to this quote, “25-40% of those rejected claims are never resubmitted for payment.” Again, money lost. Income, cash flow, revenue, just sitting there.
In fact, this quote says “when calculating the additional costs of phone inquiries, duplications, extra administrative expenses, and resubmissions, it can cost as much as $57 per claim for the doctor to handle an insurance claim in their own office.” You can do that claim for as little as 6-7% of the amount. On $150, what is that, $8 or $9? It’s under $10. Look at the savings for a doctor. That’s why doctors are getting very frustrated, because they know they’re spending way more than they should by doing the billing inside their own offices. In fact, the American Health Insurance Plan says that 29% of claims were received from health care providers more than 30 days after the service was provide. Why’s that? Again, the staff is busy in a doctor’s office. They don’t get to it immediately. A patient comes in today and sees the doctor, that claim may not be submitted for 30 days. It says 15% were received more than 60 days after the service was provided. That’s why you can help doctors. There’s a huge need out there. The office managers are pulling their hair because they don’t know what to do about it.
On top of all that, look at this quote. Market analysts estimate that $.24 out of every dollar is wasted on the administrative and billing expenses. $.24 out of every dollar, folks. If you can do it for 6-7%, does it make sense from an economic standpoint, for the doctor to do that and tie up his staff with insurance claims? No. You can save the doctor a lot of money and take that headache off of them completely. Why? Because a lot of doctors are facing a lot of overhead cost. They spend a lot of money on those fancy offices. To cover that, they need to put the money back into their growth, new equipment, and staff to help with those kinds of things.
Here’s an actual case study from one of our licensees who compared doctors’ practices, who was filing about 7200 claims a year, and the average of each of those claims was about $125, so that’s $900,000 submitted in insurance billing every year. Their rejection rate was not the average of about 34%, as it is in most doctor’s offices, but about 60%. So, basically, this licensee saved this doctor a whole bunch of money, increased their income by 41%, or about $500,000. Think the doctor wasn’t happy and didn’t give us lots of referrals for that kind of savings? Here’s the quote right here, that says “the average physician could increase their monthly billing by about 30% if their medical coding is done accurately.” Now, you probably wondered about that. Getting into the medical billing, do you have to know about all the medical codes that are out there, the diagnostic and procedure codes? No. Our system has all those codes in it. We have a hundred certified medical coders ready to help you with that coding. So, doctors are losing about 30% of their income, by coding inaccurately. So, we can save the doctor a lot of money. These are the codes, of course, for when the doctor sees you, there’s a code for that, and for everything the doctor does, and all the procedures and diagnostics, it’s all a bunch of codes there.
You don’t have to worry about that, because we have a service you can offer to doctors that will improve their reimbursement rate by up to 30%. You think that’s not a door opener? You think that won’t get the doctor’s attention? The doctor can put a lot more money in their bank account by doing nothing differently except changing the codes that you recommend. When I say you, of course, you’re just offering the service. Our medical coders are actually doing the diagnostics, providing mass reports like this to the doctor, that shows them what they’re doing wrong, and how they can improve their income by coding accurately. This make the doctors very happy, and long term clients of yours, for all the other services you can offer through American Billing Systems.
Here’s a doctor that says to get paid by the insurance company he has to pay about $20 in administrative fees to collect it. Between the person that bills, the computer system, and the ongoing support, it costs about $20 per claim. All doctors know that it costs a lot more than what you’ll charge, but they just don’t know what you’ll charge. Why? Because they haven’t been approached by a medical biller who explains how they can save them money. Here’s that study that I showed you earlier. This is a different version of it showing that you can be 37% cheaper through outsourcing the billing in a doctor’s office and saving them thousands of dollars.
Then, there’s the patients. They typically don’t pay their bills like they should, so physicians are only collecting about 50% of their outstanding patient balances. That results in about $60 billion in debt every year, according to McKinsey & Company. Typical medical offices have about 52 days outstanding on those patient balances. And, more than 20% of their balances are 120 days out. That’s like four months, right? You can also solve that problem through another service that you can offer to the doctors called Choice Pay. We have the solutions to all the doctors’ cash flow problems.
#3 – Doctors Cannot Keep Up With Technology
Alright. Let’s jump right into reason Number Three why this is the perfect business. It’s because doctors cannot keep up with technology. We, as a company, keep you up on the technology. Why? Because some of them may have bought server based software. That means software that comes on a CD and is installed on the computer in the doctor’s office. Or, if they’re using a billing service, in the billing service’s office. That is not the future. You’re looking at the future, right here. Our I Claim web based system allows you to file those claims in real time over the internet, from any computer in the world. Think about the possibilities of that. In fact, our’s is such leading edge technology, that you can actually file those claims and run your business on an iPad or any web enabled device, like a smart phone. So, this is what doctors are looking for. The leading edge technology to lead their business. In fact, you may not be aware of this, but some doctors can receive up to $44,000 from the government. Think about that for a moment. Sorry, I went too far, there. $44,000 from the government. Why? Because the government is giving out what they call incentives to doctors who get up to speed, doing what they call meaningful use of an electronic medical record system. EMR.
That’s the future, folks. Again, American Business Systems has the solution to that. Only 6%l by the way, of all the medical providers out there are using an EMR that meets all the guidelines for meaningful use. We just happen to have one of those, and when you see it, it will blow you away. We call it EMRX. That’s our private label for this software, and it’s web based, runs on the iPad, and the doctors absolutely fall in love when they see this. Folks, you have no competition from any other medical billers. American Business System licensees have the marketplace at this point, and will for several years to come. There’s a window of opportunity for that incentive money out there.
#4 – No Special Training or Education is Necessary
Now, reason Number Four that this is the perfect business is no special training or education is necessary. None, whatsoever. You don’t have to open up books and go through some long, boring medical billing course on coding, and that type of stuff. All that you can learn in our week-long training class is all you need to know. We even provide laptops during the class. You’ll have hands on use of the system. You’ll be filing, in real time over the internet, medical claims that don’t actually get filed or submitted to an insurance company, but you’ll be going through all the steps and learning everything there is to know about this business. You don’t need any training aside from what we give you. How can I prove that? I prove that during these webinars which I do every Wednesday at 3 o’clock.
Those of you listening to the recording, be sure to check with your ABS representative. Maybe that time changes. These are some of the people I’ve interviewed. These are our actual licensees from coast to coast, all over the country. And, nobody from this picture that you see, but two people, had any medical background, whatsoever. Not necessarily medical billing, but anything to do with the medical field. So, that’s why we know we can teach you exactly what you need to do, to get this business going. We teach you every aspect of what’s called the medical revenue cycle. You’re looking at an illustration of it, right here. Everything the doctor needs to get money into his office, we help you cover, and we have services that you can offer to the doctor. I’ve covered some of those services. Here’s a brochure on all of those services. That’s why you have such a competitive advantage over any other medical billers that might be in your area. ABS licensees have this marketplace. We own it. That’s because we stay on top of what’s going on.
#5 – The Current Economy Demands That You Start Your Own Business
OK. Reason Number Five why this is the perfect business is that the current economy demands that you start your own business. Let me show you what I mean by that. Here’s a book out on the marketplace right now, you can find it in any book store, called “Prepare to be a Millionaire.” 43 millionaires in 7 different industries explain how you can become a millionaire in the industry of your choice. Well, one of those people is Dan Newman. He’s a medical reimbursement specialist. You can read his quote in the book. he says that over the next ten years the medical industry is going to be the most wide open field. Every doctor, dentist, hospital, and clinic, has trouble collecting money from the patients and the insurance companies. He says, “I believe that over the next decade, so much money will be made in this particular industry, it will blow you away. It will, when you see the kind of money that you can make.”
If you want another expert’s advice on getting into the field yourself, this is Robert Kiyosaki. Maybe you’ve heard of his book “Rich Dad, Poor Dad.” He has sold millions of copies in over thirty languages. He’s a best selling author and a multi-millionaire. He says, “The Number One thing people can do to increase their wealth is start a part-time business.” Why does he say part-time? Because, you never want to quit a full time business. That’s cash flow for you and your family. Guess what? We can show you how to get this business started, medical billing, working from your home, in your spare time. We have a teacher who comes down and teaches our class. She’s here this week. She started her business working a 50 hour, full-time job.
Look at this quote from senator Olympia Snowe. “Americans need more options to help them provide for their families, and the ability to work form home is an essential means of achieving that goal.” Folks, there’s nothing wrong with building a business working from home as you can. We have licensees who have gone out and opened up major offices. We had a licensee here on Monday, who was visiting, who told the class that he had just opened his third office. He’s grown that much. It’s about 6000 square feet. He has about 21 employees. So, you can get as big as you want, or you can stay as small as you want. It’s up to you. Here’s Duncan MacPherson. He’s the Co-founder and CEO of Pareto Systems. He says, “Working for a traditional corporation has become the risky option.” Working at a job has become a risky option. Why? It’s risky. You can lose that job anytime. Working for yourself has become the new job security. If you’re worried about starting the business because you don’t think it will be the secure thing for you and your family, believe me, this is the only secure thing there is.
#6 – You Can Work From Anywhere, At Any Time
Let’s jump to reason Number Six why this is the perfect business. Medical billing is the perfect business because you can work from anywhere, at anytime. Now, I’ve hinted at this, and told you that it can be done. My wife and I did it for many years. We never opened a regular office until we were about eight years into this. And, that was only because we started training and teaching other people to duplicate our success and become medical billers. We’ve had licensees work this business, literally, from the beach in Hawaii. We had a couple who traveled in an RV with a satellite on top, connected to the internet. And, of course you have phone lines, and fax lines, and all that. So, they were traveling down the road doing it. Yes, you can run this business anywhere there’s an internet connection.
That’s right, even on a cruise line. Even after what happened here recently. It’s possible to get an internet connection right in your room now on cruise ships. So, it’s a very convenient way to build your business, literally from anywhere. Build it here, in the city you’re in, move to another city, and continue doing the billing for those same doctors. One of the licensees down here this week said they had been building their business and had doctors in seven different states. There is no territory with American Business System, so you can build it as big as you want.
#7 – You Can Make More Money Than Most Doctors
Alright. Reason Number Seven that medical billing is the perfect business. First, it’s about halfway through the hour here, and I’m going to get to all your questions here shortly. If you can think of a question you want to ask me, you can type it right into the question box over there. I’ll be looking at those questions in just a second. OK. You can make more money than most doctors. Now, I know this is hard to believe for most people. But, first I’m going to give you some facts and figures you can chew on.
Here is a chart that I just got today off of payscale.com. See it right down here? Go to payscale.com, and look for the salary of doctors, MDs. Here it is. It says for a family physician, or a general practitioner, $164,000. I have licensees who have made that in their first year. I have some that will be making seven figure incomes starting this year. So, when I say you can make more than doctors, I mean it. Let me just prove that to you. For example, if you were just doing the medical billing, using our I Claim web based medical billing system, you would be able to make a lot of money just from that one service alone.
On our website, you can go to this little tab called “income potential,” then go to the medical billing income calculator. I’m going to show you a screenshot of that right here, and you’ll notice that you can fill in any numbers you want. Now, let’s say that you want to start with five doctors. That’s your goal. You want to sign up with just one handful of doctors as clients. And, by the way, there are thousands of doctors in any given area. Each of those doctors sees 20 patients a day, working 4 days a week, and let’s say you’re charging just 6% of an average claim of $100. Doing that, here’s how much you can make from those five medical offices. $124,800. Or, over $10,000 a month in income.
Let me just say that not every licensee is making this kind of money. Some doctors have more claims, and some have less than others. But, the possibilities are there, and I haven’t even touched on some of the other services that are out there. But, if you extend that out, just that money alone, you’ll see that you can make $10,399 a month, or about $124,788 a year. So, let’s add into that the fact that you sign up some of those doctors on electronic medical records. Remember, that’s our web based EMR system.
Remember, the doctor is using this to keep track of all the data. They can eliminate all the paper in their office by using this system. So, they’re paying a fee each month. Let’s say you signed up six practices with three doctors using the EMRX system. You’re going to earn about $150 per practice, per month, for doing nothing. You’re just giving them access to the EMR system. That means you’re going to net $900 a month. Folks, that’s residual income. That’s why this business can be very profitable. That’s another $10,800 in annual revenue right there. And, I haven’t touched on some of the other services.
Let’s talk about Choice Pay, which I mentioned earlier. Remember the one that helps doctors collect the money that patients owe? This is an automated system that does all the work, and as licensees, if you just sign up three doctors, each with 200 patients that are on the Choice Pay system. And the average payment for each of those patients is only $40 a month, you’re making 5% of each one of those payments, or about $1200 a month. Again, the system is doing it all for you. Collecting those payments from the patients automatically, from their bank accounts or checking accounts. So, there’s $1200 a month on that one service alone. That’s another $14,400. Are you keeping track now? Again, if you offer all these services to doctors, you can add all these income streams to your income.
Alright, let’s talk about another one called Quick Collect. This is for the old money that doctors normally just write off on their taxes. This is another web based system that allows you to automatically collecting that from the patients. You’re not doing anything. It’s all done through automation, it’s collecting that from the patients. Let’s say you had 8 doctors with 30 accounts per month that went bad or that they were turning over to you. If the average past due of each one of those patients was only $300, we collect about 40% of all the money turned over to this system, and you earn $225 per new doctor that you sign up, so there’s $2700. Then, you earn $480 per new account each month, plus $518 per account that’s closed each month. I know I’m going fast through this and you don’t understand all these numbers, but please, please trust me. If you go through our virtual brochure with one of our representatives, and let them prove this to you that these numbers are real, you’ll see that you can be earning another $998 a month.
Again, you’re not doing anything. Our automated system is collecting all the money from the patients for you and the doctor. There’s another almost $12,000 in income, for that. Let’s talk about another one that you’ve probably read about on our website. Autocard is a way of helping the doctors stay in contact with all their patients. This system will automatically send out, in the real mail with a stamp on it in an envelope, a card, making their contact with the patients each and every month. Doctors would be doing this if they had the time. They just don’t know that it can be completely automated. It’s an online system, by the way, that allows you or the doctor’s office to pick out the cards they want to send and even how often you want to send them. You can even personalize those cards with the message and signature the doctor wants on them. Those cards go out automatically.
Now, look how much money you can earn on this. If you just have 10 doctors in your entire city, each having 200 patients on our Autocard system, you could charge about $2 per card that goes out of our system. Remember, it’s no labor on your part. Your cost is only about $1 on each one of those. You’re making almost $1 per card. So, that’s about 2000 cards going out every month, that you’re making about a dollar on each one. That’s another $1920 in monthly revenue.
This is why I tell people that with our multiple streams of income, there’s no reason why you can’t make many times what the average doctor earns. There’s another $23,400 in annual revenue, just from that service alone. And, I’m not through yet. Let’s talk about our I Docks Now. This is our virtual file cabinet system. That allows the doctor to put all of their documents online, searchable, and they stay there forever, unless they delete them.
It’s a wonderful way to clear all the paperwork and files out of their office and get it online. And, it’s accessible from any computer in the world, by just going to a particular website and logging in with a password and ID. It’s a marvelous system. All of our licensees are using it to get all the information from the doctors. Until you see it, you just can’t believe how neat this system is. Ask your ABS representative to tell you more about this one, as well.
Alright. Let’s see how much money you could make on that one. You earn about $250 per new client, on what we call a setup fee. Let’s say you signed up two doctors a month, over a year’s time. That’s 24 clients times $250. You’ve made $6000 in setup fees. But, get this. You also earn $45 a month per client. So, on a monthly basis, you’re earning another $1080. And, again, you’re doing nothing. The doctor is simply using the system, and because you sold the system to the doctor, installed it in their office, basically, you then profit from that each and every month. It’s a wonderful residual income. Many of our licensees are making a lot of money with it. And, as you can see, there’s almost another $13,000.
Now, I know I’ve gone through all these services very quickly, and I know you don’t quite wrap your brain around each one of them. Just trust me that if you go through with one of our reps, our virtual brochure, that’s what we call it, is online, and they’ll guide you through that. We’ll show you and prove to you that all these kinds of things can be made. And, I’m so sorry about that slide. I had no idea it would turn out like that when I converted it here on my computer. But, if those numbers were lined up, you’d see that from all the services I just talked about, you would actually be earning a total of about $327,000 per year, from those services.
Now, are you going to get every doctor to use every service? Of course not. That’s why I gave you different numbers of doctors for each of these services. All licensees are free to run their business any way they want to. If you don’t want to offer any of these services, you don’t have to. Well, you have to offer at least one of them. You have to do the medical billing for the doctor, at least. But, you don’t have to offer any of these services. These are all optional. But, they are part of that one-time, lifetime licensing fee that you pay to us. One-time fee, and that’s all you ever pay for all of these services and all these revenue streams from all these different services.
I didn’t even touch on two of them. Here’s two more. The Code Write, and the Audit Guard I didn’t even tell you about the money that could be made off of these two. Just trust me that there are thousands of dollars that could be made from these services, as well, that would bring that $327,000 even higher. Now, after going through all this. Let me compare this to something. Some of you are looking into medical billing because you want to get into medical billing to work for a doctor in their office.
Look at your potential in working in a doctor’s office versus working for yourself. The average medical biller working for a doctor, even after ten years, is only making between $25,000-$55,000, again, according to payscale.come. So, When I show you the potential here as a medical biller, it’s twice this, just if you’re doing the medical billing. I hope I’ve convinced you that one of the reasons you should get into this is because you can make more money than the average doctor.
#8 – You Don’t Have to Reinvent The Wheel
Alright. Reason Number Eight that this is the perfect business is because you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. What do I mean by that? If you started your own medical billing business, you would have to design something that looked like some professional marking material. This is a presentation folder. You’re looking the inside and outside of that folder, that we designed for you, and have had it printed very professionally. It just feels like somebody knows what they’re doing. When you put some of our brochures inside the pocket that’s in the presentation folder, you look like a professional. You don’t have to create all this. This costs us over $5000 to have the artwork and the printing done on these brochures. You get a supply of them with your initial investment with us, and of course, can re-order them at our printing costs, going forward. Same way with all the brochures I showed you Those costs thousands of dollars in the graphic artists fees to have these developed. Then, all of them are printed on very slick, full color paper. And, don’t they all look nice? They all look like they’re a part of a system. They are. The American Business Systems with billing and all the other services, as well.
Then, there’s our direct mail postcards and greeting cards. We’ve already designed these folks, and we spent lots of money to make you look like the professional that you will be. It’s over $4000 just for this trade show display, that you can borrow from us. All over the country, we’ll show you how to find these and get set up with them. You’ll get lots of leads, just going to those shows. Then, there’s the professional website that we’ve designed for you. This could cost you $2500-$3500 for the website that we’re including in our package. Very professional, very needed in today’s world. We’ll show you how to get traffic to your website by using what’s called Search Engine Optimization. We have a licensee who specializes in that, by the way, for our other licensees, and can show you how to make lots of money off of leads off of the internet.
We also have the book I mentioned earlier, “Cash Crunch to Cash Flow.” This is, again, a book you can buy at the book store for $14.95. We sell this to you at our printing cost, which is about $4. You can put your name on the inside of these books and hand them out to doctors as marketing tools for third party credibility. We even spent $30,000 developing this DVD. It has a number of doctors who are clients of some of our licensees. It sells the doctor on the fact that they nee to outsource their billing. Nothing is mentioned about our company, or any of the licensees. This is all done very generically. In fact, on the back of that DVD case, you can put your own label, name, address, etc. It can be printed right there for you.
These are marketing tools. Don’t reinvent the wheel. Don’t go out and try to something like this on your own. You couldn’t do the types of reports, for example, that our Audit Guard service creates, or our Code Wright service, like I showed you earlier. You don’t even have to worry about the direct marketing to your own clients. We use this Auto Card system to get your clients. Again, these are the types of tools that would take you thousands of dollars, and hours and hours to come up with on your own. Or, if you’re one of those people who doesn’t like to do any marketing on your own, or hates the sales process, we’ll show you through our sales rep program, how to find, hire, train, and pay commissioned sales reps. The lady who’s teaching our class right here, has three full time sales reps bringing her all the business she can handle, even while she’s here teaching the class.
We even have a way of getting leads off the internet, and sending them directly to you. So, we do a lot of marketing and promotion for our licensees. We’ll even show you how to use a telemarketing system, to get new clients. And, our support department is always there, we have full time support people there to help you in any way. It’s lifetime support. There’s never a charge for any support, as long as you’re an ABS licensee. You’ll always have that support. We do marketing webinars on a regular basis. Here are some titles. I know that’s kind of tiny print there on your screen. These are some that we do on a regular basis to continue to educate our licensees. Again, no cost for this. It’s all included in the lifetime licensing fee.
#9 – Doctors Are Going Broke
Alright, let’s get to point Number Nine. This is a perfect business because doctors are going broke. I didn’t just make that up. I got that right off of CNN Money. The other day their website had an article called “Doctors Going Broke.” Let me give you a couple quotes from that. It starts out by saying “Doctors in America are harboring an embarrassing secret. Many of them are going broke. This quiet reality is spreading nation wide and claiming a wide range of casualties, including family physicians, cardiologists, oncologists. Industry watchers say the trend is worrisome. Half of all doctors in the nation operate a private practice. So, if a cash crunch forces the death of an independent practice, it robs the community of a vital health care resource.
A lot of independent practices are starting to see serious financial issues, says Marc Lion, CEO of Lion & Company CPAs, which advises independent doctors’ practices about their finances. “Doctors list shrinking insurance reimbursements,” and these are all things you can help the doctor with, “changing regulations,” you are kept up on all those regulations, of course, and can say that to your doctor, “rising business and drug costs are among the factors preventing them from keeping their businesses afloat. But, some experts counter that doctors lack of business acumen is also to blame.”
Everybody agrees, doctors are the worst business people in the world. Anybody who’s worked for a doctor will testify to that. Small business 101, a private practice is like a small business. The only thing different is that a third party, and not the customer, is paying for the service. That third party, of course, is the insurance companies, or Medicare. “Many times, I shake my head,” he said. “Doctors are trained in medicine, but not how to run a business.” His biggest challenge is getting doctors to realize where and how their profits are leaking. “On average, there’s 10-15% profit leak in a private practice,” he says. “Much of that is tied to money owed to the practice by the patients or insurers. This is also why there is seen a cash crunch.” This article just came out this month, and I published my book almost two years ago. And, I used “Cash Crunch to Cash Flow” as the title, and I even said in the subtitle that we will teach you how to teach doctors to plug the leaks in their profits. So, I think that was a foretelling about what this article was going to say.
#10 – There Is No Down Side
Alright. Here’s the last point, and then we’re going to answer your questions. You have no down side. That’s right. This is the perfect business. Look at all the downsides of other business. You have huge up front investments. Our licensing fee is about $25,000. I know that sounds like a lot of money to a lot people. But, believe me, but if you look at franchises and other businesses, that’s on the low end. You have no ongoing franchise fees, you don’t have to get any commercial property, you can work from home, there is no equipment and inventory other than what you already have, a computer and phone, no inventory, no storing and management of the inventory, no capital is tied up in products. You don’t have to hire employees, and if you do hire help it could just be your sister-in-law, and you could just pay her as an independent contractor, so there’s no tax, payroll, benefits, turnover, daily stress, and so forth. There’s no travel, no loss of productive time, no loss of gasoline, insurance, or maintenance, you won’t be traveling. You’ll be working from your home and there’s no stress of all the other drivers.
Many of the businesses out there are passing fads like low carb stores, VHS and DVD rentals, yogurt stores, those things come and go. This medical billing is here to stay. It’s a real business. And, most other businesses have unreliable or uneven income. They don’t have monthly residual like this business has. You’re always looking for new clients with most businesses. Not with this one. Once you get a doctor, you have that income month after month. Usually, there’s too much personal involvement. You can run your business just like the lady down here teaching our class this week, long distance, working from a different city. With most businesses, there’s no chance to walk away, go on vacation, or take sick days. There’s nothing to sell. This is a wonderful business because you can take off when you need to.
In this business, you are operating and working hard, but you’re working with professionals, and it’s interesting work. Like I said earlier, with franchises you lose all control. They tell you exactly what to do. With us, you’re an independent business owner. You do what you want with your business. It’s your business. You have no ongoing royalties of 5-8%, or anything like that. This is a great business because there’s nothing after that initial fee. Most businesses have a huge risk. They fail in their first year, and even franchises have been known to go out of business. With us, there is no risk. I put it right in writing in the agreement. Here’s what our money back guarantee says. Right there in the agreement. If at the the end of the training workshop, for any reason, you do not think this business is right for you, just tell any staff member, and they’ll arrange for you to receive a full refund of your licensing fee. Look, I don’t know of any other company that does that. Nobody in America lets you come to their training and see all of their proprietary information, then ask for your money back. Why can we do that? Because it doesn’t happen.
In my book, “How to Reprogram Yourself for Success,” I have a forward by Shad Helmstetter. See it right here on the front cover? Shad Helmstetter, PhD. He’s written several books. One of them is called “Choices.” I love this quote. “It’s only when you exercise your right to choose, that you can also exercise your right to change.” So you have a choice to make of spending one week down here in Dallas, learning how to be in control of your life and make the income you deserve, and never worry about losing a job or not being able to support your family. Or you can just continue doing what you’ve always been doing and getting the results that you’ve been getting. You have to make that choice, that’s up to you. But, I encourage you to get with us. Call the 800 number that you see there on the screen and speak to one of our representatives, and find out how you can get enrolled in that next class coming up in Dallas. Be sure to go to our website, ABSystems.com. Research all you can there, find out all about the business, then call us and we’ll tell you even more.
Now, I’m going to open it up for questions. I see some of them coming in already. So, I’m just going to address those while we leave this on the screen. Let’s see. One of them is from Doug who says “How does the software eliminate the need to know the coding side of the business?” Great question, Doug. Real simple. Ours is a web based system so all the codes are actually in the system. So, when you put in a code, if the code doesn’t match exactly what the doctor told you to put in, our system will tell you that you’ve made a mistake in the codes. They’re all built into the system. The doctor is the one providing you with those codes. Now, if the doctor doesn’t know what the code should be, you can’t pick the code for him. So you utilize our auto Code Write system with our 100 certified medical coders that can help the doctor with that code. Now, that is for a fee, but you make money on that fee, and it assures the doctor that they’re getting the reimbursement that they’re legally able to get.
OK. Let’s see. Doug’s second part of that question is “Will the new software comply with a new ICD10 requirements?” Yes. In fact, those new codes, he’s talking about the new codes that come out in October of 2013, but our system is already ready for those. And, the neat part is that as soon as those codes become available to the general doctors that are out there, they’ll automatically be in our system. So, the next time you log in from any web browser, you’ll be looking at those new codes. We keep up with all that for you, Doug. That’s a part of what we do.
Bob’s asking “How much time would an average person put into running this business?” Well, of course that depends on whether you’re doing this part time or full time, but most of our licensees will tell you that they only put in a few hours a week. We had a licensee recently down that came in to talk to the class. She lives out in California, and she tells people that she only works about 15 hours a week. She has about 10 doctors, and she has three full time people working for her. That’s how you do it. You don’t have to put in much time yourself. You’re just managing. You’re just supervising and overseeing the business at some point. The lady that’s teaching the class in that picture on the screen is Bonnie Preston. Bonnie has been doing this now for 4 years, and she says that she only puts in about 5 hours a week, because again, she has staff members that are actually handling all that for her.
Here are some great questions coming in now. Charlotte says “Hello, Patrick. I will be doing business with my husband, Ricardo. We want to go to Dallas for the live training workshop. What will be the fee? Do we need to pay for two?” Yes. Actually, our licensing fee, and you’ll see this on our website Charlotte, there’s a link at the top that says “What is the investment,” and you’ll see, if you haven’t already, that that investment is for one person to come to the training. That fee is $24,990. Now, we’re working with people to try to do whatever we can to help people get involved We know it’s tough at times. So, if you need some help, be sure to talk to us about that. We do have some discounts for paying in full. But, there is an extra fee for an extra person of $495. So, that is how that works, and that’s only if those seats are available. As you can see, the classroom only holds about 20 people, Charlotte.
And, let’s see. James is saying “The EMR system that is available for doctors, are their options for available templating, and will it work for certain specialists like podiatrists?” Yes, and yes, James. In fact, our EMR can be customized for that doctor, specifically how their work flow works. The template can be customized exactly how they want to see it. You’ll be amazed at how customizable that EMR is for doctors. Ike says “What platform is this operation built on? Is it Java based?” Ike, remember I’m the founder of the company and the CEO. I have technical people who could probably answer that question behind the scenes, since it’s web based it may be Java based. I’m not sure the answer Ike, but I will get you the answer to that. We save all the questions in the software we’re using to do this webinar, and I’ll get one of the reps to get with you about that, if that’s important to you.
Soloman says “With so much potential to save money for doctors and in the process, earning a part of that as fees, there must be some serious competitors. Which market share do you hold, and what do you know about your closest competitor?” Soloman, as far as we know, of course, there are a lot of people out there doing medical billing who have just learned on their own and they go out and try to get clients. Some of the succeed and some don’t, because again, you have to know what you’re doing. We’ve been doing this for 17 years, so we’ve kind of gotten this down to a fine art. That’s why we call it a system. If you’ll follow our system, you’ll be successful. So, when you talk about competitors, it’s anybody out there who’s doing medical billing. There aren’t major competitors for us as a company, except for one. Their name is Claimtech. They’re a fine company. They’ve been around for about as many years as we have. They’re out in California. They do sell a training program. It’s not live workshops like ours. It’s just over the phone. I think it’s limited to about 12 hours. Their software is server based, which means it comes on a CD and isn’t web based, so it’s a little old, technology wise. But, again they have different options and you might check them out, as well.
Here’s another one from Doug. “How do licensees get paid? Do we invoice the doctors, or is the process automated through the claims system?” Doug, you do basically invoice your doctors. However, we have a software that also allows you to automatically collect that money each month. Most of our licensees are using that software that allows them to draw that money directly out of the doctor’s bank account. That’s after, of course, the doctor has verified through the system. Remember, you can let them log into the system since it’s web based. Once they verify that everything looks right, it’s all just automatically done.
Marie “Outsource for hospitals. Will there every be anything done for them? My daughter works now in a major hospital and they’re working for outsourcing systems or people.” Marie, there is software available that we can make available to any licensee that wants to do hospital billing. Having said that, it’s a completely different system from our I Claim system that I showed you earlier. Because hospitals file a different type of insurance claim form for Medicare. So, even though it’s completely different, it is possible, but rare that any of our licensees run across a hospital that doesn’t have their own system. I’m not sure who you’re talking about there, or your daughter’s hospital, but it is possible. So, just ask one of our reps a little more about that, and we’ll be glad to tell you about that.
James says “Earlier in your presentation you said that extra education is not required. Would it be better to take a course in medical billing and coding prior to starting the business, or can somebody with a basic business degree be able to run this business?” It never hurts for anybody to have extra education. I would never discourage anybody from that. But, the longer you get bogged down in “education” the longer it’s going to take you to get a business started. And, the money is in actually running a medical billing business, not learning about it. Many of our licensees go out and sign a doctor just with the training we give them in our one week class, and have revenue. You could then, once you have revenue going, take some courses to feel like you have some knowledge, but we give you all the information that you need to get going, get a client, and start billing. It’s not rocket science, and we’ve have it down to a system that makes it a step-by-step way of getting started. So, that’s not necessary.
Well, that’s all the questions I see. Thank you folks for attending today.
I appreciate it so much.