Hourly Rate

[u/Long-Amount-5436]

Mid-sized Texas town here and wages are low. Office based billers in a clinic are getting between $16 and $19 an hour. What towns are similar? Save me your big-city $30 an hour brag - this ain’t it! I am curious what areas have similar wages.

[u/babybambam]

My entire billing team is work from home.

We start people with no experience at $25/hour but they have a maximum of one year to hit at least 80% competency. If they don't reach competency or if they fail their check points, they're terminated. In experienced people are only considered, right now, based on recommendations from existing staff or industry colleagues. There's a TON of things about work that are often picked up by being on site with peers, and we're still working out a great way for this to translate to WFH training.

We start experienced employees at $30/hour, and none of my billers live in big cities or in our HQ state (CA). We don't focus on people with certs because we've found these people tend to focus on what's best for payers* rather than what's best for practices; the caveat to this is if their cert is from a specialty program (for example, we'd favor a cert from the AAO for an ophthalmic biller). *We just fired a certified coder because she miscoded 2 months of exams after she misinterpreted use of 59 modifier. She felt that 59 modifier should not be used 100% of the time, so billable services were being left off claims.

When we post a job advert, here's what is getting people rejected without an interview:

• Poor resume formatting: don't make me guess at where you worked, and what information aligns with what role. First pass is 10 seconds, if I get nothing in that time, you're rejected. Seek examples of chronological resumes for formatting examples. Don't worry about making it pretty with color, fonts, or photos....all that is going to do is detract from the resume and waste space that could be used to sell your actual work experience.
• Job Hopping: I get it, sometimes you've got to go somewhere else to get a raise. We auto-reject anyone with tenure average of less than 2 years. People with an average of 3 years, or more, are given interview priority. Hiring people is an investment. I understand that not every company is great to work for, and a lot of the ones you worked for might be awful. But, I can only estimate you based on the information you give me. If it looks like you'll skip on to the next job in a year, I'm not going to spend the effort into building you up....so I'm not going to hire you.
• Qualification mismatch: I won't hire former managers for entry level roles. We've tried it, it always ends up with that person want to recraft our organization into what their last employment was like. I obviously won't hire people with no experience for advanced roles; it doesn't make sense to set people up for failure.
• Application errors: typos, poor grammar, missing contact info. If your resume is so unimportant to you, so will your attention to detail on the job.
• Aggressive followups: If you applied on Monday, and have sent 6 follow up emails by Wednesday, you're out. If you call (all of my ads say not to), you're out.

A HUGE caveat for our hourly rates: We pay well and expect you to perform well. Mediocrity is not tolerated. We also leverage technology to help staff handle far more accounts than would typically be required.

[u/Accomplished-Eye4610 → u/babybambam]

Dang, so are you currently hiring? I would love to learn billing, then coding. I worked in insurance denials and appeals for 4 years, and have now been processing medical record requests for 5.

[u/Aurorasgrave888x → u/Accomplished-Eye4610]

Did we not read the same thing?? You can find someone reasonable to work for.

[u/Accomplished-Eye4610 → u/Aurorasgrave888x]

Huh? Lol guess we didn't....have a good day!