Anesthesia Business Consultants: History
Anesthesia Business Consultants has evolved through three distinct phases since its inception in 1979. The early days were marked by consistent growth as ABC entered into service agreements with solo anesthesiologists and small group practices in more than a dozen states. Our limited service offering reflected the reality that most anesthesia providers were primarily concerned with maximizing income and minimizing overhead expenses. We have always prided ourselves on having a team of professionals who understood the nuances and subtleties of anesthesia reimbursement. We challenged ourselves to be the most cost-effective solution with the most consistent results.
As the market changed during the 1980s, we realized that our survival depended upon adopting an entirely new set of tools and strategies. The proliferation of managed care, the proliferation of anesthesia group formations and the revenue challenges posed by contract limitations and the Medicare Payment reform created enormous financial pressure for all billing companies. Traditional approaches to accounts receivable management had to be completely rethought. Contract negotiation and management were essential to revenue maximization. We recognized we had to understand payer strategies and motives in order to effectively negotiate reasonable contract terms. Our clients came to rely on us to negotiate the best possible rates and terms. As a result of our intimate involvement in so many managed care contract negotiations, we developed extensive expertise and many very effective tools that resulted in above average rates for our clients.
Clearly, technology was the key to effective management of the billing and collections process. It was not enough to rely on good people, to be successful one needed to monitor every phase of the process closely. By the mid 1990’s most of our largest clients had become substantial consumers of management information. Since the requisite technological resources appeared to be beyond our grasp as a relatively small organization, we made the decision to merge with a larger, public company that we believed would complement our team of professionals with significant technological resources and systems. We viewed this merger as an opportunity to meet the changing demands of the market and provide a higher level of service to our customers, an objective that has always driven our decision-making.
While the merger did, in fact, provide us access to many interesting options, we soon realized that in selling your business, you lose control. It did not take long to realize that being a small part of the large public company with a variety of business objectives was not in the best interest of our customers. We regret the fact that some decided to pursue other options during this period of constant transition as the business was resold twice.
In March 2001, Tony and Sue Mira bought the company back from Oxford Healthcare. This resulted in the current organization, Anesthesia Business Consultants, which sees its mission as meeting the specific business challenges of anesthesiologists, hospitals that employ anesthesia providers, and pain management specialists. Considerable resources have been spent on the enhancement of our team with recognized industry experts and systems upgrades.
The result is the largest anesthesia-only provider of outsourced billing and management services in the country. We are the only national service organization to be privately held. Our client base is the most solid in the industry. We are chosen more often as the preferred vendor for billing solutions than any other company. Any one of our clients will be happy to vouch for the integrity of our staff, the quality of our services, and the consistency of our results.
