MedicsPremier is a product from the Advanced Data Systems Corporation (ADS). Their Founder and President, boldly claims that since its inception in 1977, the company has not changed it name, been involved in any mergers or acquisitions, and not discontinued any of its products- which is an enviable track record. ADS remains a private company, with over 300 employees, and over 40 millions EDI transactions on an annual basis.
Features
MedicsPremier is a fully featured medical billing service that goes way beyond the practice of billing insurance companies and their patients to collect payments for providers. Rather, there is an entire gaggle of ancillary services, that range from denial management, fee schedule review & analysis, provider enrollment assistance, and revenue cycle management, among others.
Too often, these medical billing services are tied to only a single EHR, as they are part of a suite of larger services. While MedicsPremier does offer many different services, it is thankfully not limited to only a single platform, allowing a practice or facility to keep their existing EHR if they are satisfied with it. In fact, MedicsPremier indicates that they can suggest an EHR, and even work without any EHR with their e-superbill process.
Of course, MedicsPremier will work best when used within the ecosystem of other services offered by this company, that all together form an integrated whole to maximize revenue throughout the process. A good example of this is with the scheduling software, at the point of scheduling a patient for their appointment, it can be checked if the provider is in network for the visit, and give an estimate for the copay that will be required. This is powerful so the patient can be informed prior to the visit, and avoids surprises after. It also reminds the practice to collect the copay at the time of the visit, which is easier and more efficient than trying to obtain it after.
With this approach of maximizing the coverage up front, the rest of the process gets simplified, as patients are in network, or aware they are out of network prior to the visit. MedicsPremier then claims a high- even among their software billing peers- 99% first billing submission success rate. It is also stated that this includes some of the more challenging providers, including “HCFA, UB, workers compensation and no-fault claims.” This optimizes the practice’s time, to reduce the rejected claims, that require resubmission, that ultimately cost the practice cash from both labor, and delays in getting paid.
An advantage of any billing software these days is the integration with business analytics, that can provide an instant snapshot into a practice’s financial health. Here, there are options to compile the relevant data into a graphical chart, a dashboard, or a more standard report format. We also appreciate the option to export the data into an Excel spreadsheet for further analysis.
Drawbacks
While information is a powerful tool, organizing it in an easily digestible format is the frequent challenge of any platform. Here, MedicsPremier falls short, with an appearance that is busy, with too much information at once presented, and users complaining that it is difficult to comprehend, and pick out the data points that are useful to their practice. In addition, the interface has a dated look to it. Furthermore, some complain that there is such a plethora of reporting options, that again they get lost, and need to get assistance from support.
There is also a lack of customizable reports. Rather than being able to create a single custom report that would contain the information of interest, users complain that they have to run multiple reports from the available options to get the desired data.
Finally, there is only software available for a single platform- Windows. There is no software for Mac or Linux, and also an even more glaring omission is no available apps for either Android or iOS, which many competitors have to preserve access to data when out of the office.
Support
Support for MedicsPremier is during business hours, and online. Contact gets made via email, or the telephone.
There is also a wealth of additional material to help with training staff new to the system, and updating veteran users. These include eBooks such as Collecting More Patient Payments:
A Guide to Best Practices and The “Ins” and “Outs” of Revenue Cycle Management: INcome by OUTsourcing, along with online video content, for example “MedicsRCM: Cloud-Based & Transparent RCM Services” among a potpourri of infographics, whitepapers and brochures.
Pricing
Unfortunately, like much of its compatriots, MedicsPremier does not share their pricing upfront. Rather, an online form must be filled out, and subsequently contact is required for a custom quote to be made.
After multiple online searches, we conclude that the pricing for MedicsPremier is quite opaque, and we cannot glean any idea of the cost, other than in a solitary user review that indicates that the cost is high.
Final verdict
MedicsPremier is a more than competent medical software billing service. We can appreciate the extremely high first submission payment rate, the integration with the scheduling software, and the flexibility to work with different EHR’s. To balance these advantages out though, the complete lack of mobile apps, the busy format that information gets presented in, and the lack of a full breadth of support options leaves us cold. Without a free trial to make a quality decision, or upfront and transparent pricing, we cannot give MedicsPremier a higher recommendation than average.
