Which medical billing company is best for a small practice?
No single company is best for every practice, and we do not rank ourselves against competitors. What differs between vendors is published price versus quote-only pricing, minimum contract term, whether staff work inside your own system under your login, and whether the vendor will show you a real reference. Compare on those points, not a rating.
The detail
There is no independent, audited ranking of medical billing companies, and any page claiming one is making it up. What a buyer can actually check is public and specific: is the price on the website or only available after a call; what is the minimum term and the notice period to leave; does the vendor work inside your practice-management system under a login you control, or ask you to send data to its own system; and will it put you in touch with a working reference rather than a prepared testimonial.
/compare/ lists named vendors on their own published prices, quoted and dated, for exactly this reason, so the comparison is made on their words, not ours. This company does not have a client base large enough to offer a wall of case studies, and says so rather than inventing one; what it offers instead is a published price and a free AR audit before any contract, which you can judge directly.
What should I look for when choosing a billing company?
Four things settle most of it: a published price you can see before a call, a short minimum term with real notice to leave, staff who work inside your own system under logins you control, and a signed business associate agreement before anyone touches patient data. A vendor that fails any one of those is worth a harder look.
The detail
The fourteen questions worth putting to any offshore RCM vendor before signing, including the three where this company's own honest answer counts against us, are written out in full on /questions-to-ask/, grouped by whether the vendor can do the work, whether it will keep doing it, and what happens to patient data while it does.
In short: ask for the price in writing rather than a quote after a discovery call; ask which practice-management systems the vendor already supports, since some PM and EHR systems have a narrower vendor pool than others; and ask what the contract says about a run-out period if you ever leave, which this cluster's switching questions cover in full.
What are the top RCM companies in the US?
There is no independent, audited ranking of RCM companies, so a confident top-five list is a marketing opinion, not a measured fact. A more useful question is what to compare: published price, minimum term, who performs the work, and whose system it runs in. /compare/ answers that for several named vendors, on their own published pages.
The detail
No government body, trade association or audited survey ranks RCM companies, and a listicle that names five without saying how it scored them is not evidence of anything. The honest answer is that ranking the industry is not something this page, or any page, can actually do credibly.
What can be done honestly is a side-by-side on the things that are checkable: the price a vendor publishes against one you have to request, its minimum contract term, whether it works inside your own practice-management system or its own, and what its own page says about a guarantee or replacement policy. /compare/ does exactly that for the offshore vendors reviewed, quoting their own pages and dating every quote.
How do I switch medical billing companies without losing AR already in progress?
Keep the outgoing vendor working your existing AR through a defined run-out period while the new vendor starts only on new claims going forward. Get read access to the old system during the transition, confirm who owns the data and claim history, and set a specific handoff date in writing rather than a vague overlap.
The detail
The AR already in the pipeline when you switch is the part most practices lose track of, because during a handoff it belongs to no one's job description. The safer structure is a run-out: the outgoing vendor keeps working the claims it already started, under a defined end date, while the new vendor takes only claims dated after the changeover, closing the gap where nobody is calling on last month's denials.
Before the switch, get your own export of the aged AR report and the claim history, confirm in writing who retains access to the old clearinghouse and payer portals during the overlap, and put the handoff date in the contract rather than leaving it as a couple of weeks. See the run-out clause question in this cluster for what that specific term should say.
What is a run-out clause, and should my billing contract have one?
Yes. A run-out clause states what happens to claims your current vendor already started when the contract ends: who keeps working them, for how long, and at what cost, if any. Without one in writing, a vendor can simply stop on the termination date and leave aged AR with nobody assigned to it.
The detail
Most billing contracts say nothing about claims already in progress on the day the contract ends, which leaves the question to whichever vendor feels like finishing the work. A written run-out clause fixes that: it names a period, commonly thirty to ninety days, during which the outgoing vendor keeps working the AR it already touched, and states whether that work is billed at the same rate, a reduced rate, or included at no charge.
Before signing any contract, ask specifically what happens to work in progress if either side ends it, and get the answer in writing rather than a verbal assurance. Our own terms are published on /founding-clients/ and /pricing/ rather than held back for a negotiation.
What should I measure in the first month with a new billing vendor?
Four numbers, taken before the switch and again thirty days in: days in AR, the clean-claim rate, the denial rate, and how much of the prior backlog actually got worked rather than left untouched. A vendor who improves none of the four in month one is unlikely to improve them in month six.
The detail
Pull your own baseline before the new vendor starts: current days in AR, the share of claims accepted clean on first submission, the denial rate over the trailing month, and the size and age of the existing backlog. Pull the same four numbers again at the thirty-day mark and compare them directly rather than relying on a vendor's own summary report.
The backlog number matters most and is easiest to obscure: a vendor can show a clean report on new claims while quietly leaving the aged backlog untouched. Ask specifically how many backlog accounts were worked, not only how many new claims were submitted, in the first month.
How do I know if my current billing vendor's performance is actually good or bad?
Compare your own days-in-AR and denial-rate trend over the last six months against your own history, not a number borrowed from somewhere else. A rising trend in either number, a shrinking share of claims resolved under ninety days, or a vendor who cannot produce that history on request are each a real warning sign on their own.
The detail
There is no single published figure for a normal denial rate or AR-aging split that applies evenly across every specialty and payer, so comparing your own numbers against your own history is stronger evidence than comparing them against a borrowed national average. A vendor whose days in AR are rising month over month, whose denial rate is rising, or whose share of AR sitting past ninety days is growing, is moving the wrong direction regardless of what any average says.
A vendor who cannot hand you that trend on request, broken out by payer, is itself a finding: the data exists in any practice-management system, and a vendor confident in its own work shows it without being asked twice. A free AR audit, at /free-ar-audit/, gives you an outside read on the same numbers.
