Week 5 – If you can’t stand the heat…

Hello Again! This week’s blog will reveal my successful pilot study results after my transition from physicians to medical billers. Then, I’ll provide a brief overview of my developed methodology for the interview phase.

As discussed last week, I began my project with the incorrect assumption that physicians handled their relationship with medical billers. From my last interview, I found that medical billers were the intermediary group between the physicians and medical billers. In order to test the validity of this tip from the physician, I conducted five interviews with medical billers across the Bay Area as a small pilot study.

I immediately found that medical billers had much more contact with insurance providers than physicians.

As shown in the figure above, it was clear that medical billers had a much higher level of contact, five times as much contact, with insurance providers than physicians. In fact, physicians had little to no contact with insurance providers and were entirely divorced from that institution. The medical billers proved themselves to be a reliable source to report the relationship between physicians and insurance providers.

The medical billers were also a great data-source because, unlike physicians, they had no skin in the game. After being assured of their anonymity, medical billers had little concern over legal issues after discussing their problems with insurance providers. However, physicians were reluctant to share any data, even after being assured of anonymity and legal clearance. So, medical billers were perfect for my study.

Because of the success of my pilot study, I can now move onto my full methodology. I plan to conduct interviews across 11 major cities in the Bay Area for over 7000 medical offices. Next week, I’ll explain how my ambitions were a little too much to handle.