My daughter Melanie Collins and I are the owners of IMJ Credentialing. I have over 25 years of experience working in the Mental Health/ Medical field as an Office Manager, Human Resources Director, Administrative Assistant and Credentialing Specialist. Melanie brings a wealth of knowledge from her Bachelor's degree in Business Communications and experience in Marketing and Business Management. Due to over half of U.S. companies outsourcing various tasks to keep labor costs low and increase efficiency, we found that offering our services would be a smart move for this company and our clients. We started the business with a mission to offer secretarial services to students and entrepreneurs from small start ups to large corporations. Our company acts as a call center for your business, assisting with scheduling and registering your client's/patient's. We also assist with basic tasks such as typing, data entry, email management, mailings, on-site training and much more. Our specialty is in payer enrollment services and verification of patient health benefits for medical and mental health professionals. This specialty not only assists clinicians by removing the overwhelming burden of completing massive amounts of paperwork, but it also helps put an end to turning patients away due to not accepting health insurance plans. The payer enrollment process is done by gathering pertinent information such as malpractice insurance, state licenses, employment history and more in order to prepare for the credentialing process. This includes, but is not limited to, enrolling clinicians into various health insurance plans so that they can become participating health insurance providers in their field of practice. The process can take anywhere from 30 days to 120 days or more depending on eligibility and network status; therefore, we always advise clinicians to start early!
Throughout the years, I found that the credentialing aspect has always been the "overwhelming process" that many clinicians dreaded. They all seem to paint a dark cloud over the entire process....giving it theme music that expresses dark melodic undertones with a witch cackling over a poisonous brew. It's funny ...
and overwhelming all wrapped in one. Then you add a layer of verifying patient benefits which is a monster all by itself. You have to keep in mind that successful billing comes from successfully verifying your patient's benefits BEFORE they come in for their scheduled visit. I have seen so many companies lose revenue because they do not realize that credentialing providers and verifying patient benefits go hand in hand. I have heard so many complaints and confusion from clinicians about not being paid accurately from insurance companies or wasting time servicing a patient for numerous sessions... all to find out that after the 5th session, they weren't even in network with the patients plan. After hearing tons of horror stories, I came to the realization that I needed to start a company to help educate, lighten the load and make it easier on providers to basically concentrate on doing what they do best... "service their clients".
Get Away Every Day and Leave the Work to IMJ!
Ivy Jefferson
President/Owner