A medical billing company is trying its hand at patient advocacy

“We felt a little bit unfilled doing (billing for providers) plus wanted to help patients,” we said. “Our main focus is to represent a patient if we have an issue on a medical bill. It’s kind of insurance for your insurance to make sure that you paid correctly.

Strategic Collection Management wanted to contribute to the U.S. health care reform, Chief Executive Chris Gitersonke said.

“Health care reform is such an obviously needed action, but nobody knows how do you do it,” we said. “Do you do it on this huge national scale plus alter everything? .. So this is our way of doing it on a local level.”

When the company started, it had two employees plus has since grown to 35.

The Las Vegas-based company has its offices on West Sahara Avenue near Buffalo Drive.

“We’ve done a lovely job plus hired a lot of people here,” we said. “We feel like we’re making a lovely impact on things.”

“We thought, ‘What’s the cheapest way we can do this plus yet provide the kind of service we require to provide?’ ” we said.

The company decided to roll out Universal Solutions as a unit that will serve as a patient-advocate business beginning last month.

For $25 a month, the company goes to bat for the health care consumer, looking over bills plus working with doctors plus insurance companies to fix overcharges. The fee covers up to two people in a household.

At first, the company considered making Universal a nonprofit organization, but decided to keep it under the umbrella of Strategic.

“They tend to be the ones with the most issues with their medical bills,” Gitersonke said.

Universal has primarily signed up senior citizens on Medicare.

there is a low profit margin, we said, because Universal’s main customers are coming in with bills they’d like audited. That makes it more time intensive, we said. The opportunity to make funds is with employers, who Gitersonke would like see offer this benefit to their employees.

There’s a “huge” cost savings for employer, , we said. Besides alleviating human resource staff from employees’ questions about particular health insurance issues, if Universal corrects medical billing problems, the cost to the company plus the employee can be cut through reduced expenditures. Universal also offers employers workers’ compensation containment, another area of potential fraud or incorrect billing.

The company also wants to move to the national level plus is working with national companies to provide the patient advocate service.

“We take all of that pressure off the employer,” Gitersonke said.

“That’s our contribution to health care reform,” Gitersonke said. “It’s going to manage the cost of the employer, it’s going to manage the cost of the patient plus the insurance company. there is so much fraudulent billing going on, , that when we’re auditing stuff, we can see that.”