SM: Whom do you charge, and what do you charge, for the Patient Ally system? BO: We offer that for free. SM: So you are subsidizing that with your Office Ally business? BO: Correct. Our EHR product is the least expensive in the country. It cost $9.95 a month which subsidizes Patient Ally.
SM: What are your future plans for the company? Where is Office Ally headed? BO: We continue to find ways to reduce waste in healthcare. There is a concept called the accountable care organization.
SM: What is the process for processing a paper claim? Aside from manual data entry, how does it increase cost over digital claims? BO: When a paper claim comes in it is scanned and OCR’d. It is then loaded into the system and the codes are error checked. If the doctor sends a bad code,
SM: If I understand your business, you have direct marketing and selling costs to the insurance companies. Is that correct? BO: Half of our growth every year is word of mouth. We sign up 1,200 new practices a month, which represents anywhere from 3,500 to 4,000 new doctors a month. Half of those come in
SM: Based on the number of customers you have today, how many people have insurance companies laid off due to your technology? BO: I have no idea. We have taken a significant amount of money out of the healthcare budget. SM: I asked that question in a complimentary fashion. Good technology has effects on organizations.
SM: Did you negotiate the deal before writing the software? How did you know the insurance company would be willing to pay for your software? BO: I wrote the software first because I had a lot of doctor friends and they had told me how terrible the situation was. It took forever for them to
Brian O’Neill founded Office Ally in 2000 after observing poor business practices in the healthcare industry. Office Ally (covered in Deal Radar early this year) is a health information network connecting patients, providers, and payers. It offers a free practice management system, a free clearinghouse, a low-cost electronic health record ($29.95/month/provider) as well as a patient