MEDICAL ECONOMICS
Dues check justified TMA payment advocacy earns big return on dues dollars
Pearsall family physician Daniel Schmidt, DO, discusses Medicare payment problems with Texas Medical Association payment specialist Erin Gregorcyk Smith. Ms. Smith helped Dr. Schmidt recover nearly $15,000 in Medicare payments that had been held up for several months.
“You don’t get $1 million without a lot of hard
work, a lot of expertise, and a lot of different things that had to be corrected.”
BY KEN ORTOLON
Pearsall family physician Daniel Schmidt, DO, says Texas Medi-
cal Association payment specialist Erin Gregorcyk Smith was a “guardian angel” for him earlier this year when he was having problems getting his Medicare payments. “They didn’t pay us for six months while they were reviewing our credentials, and they didn’t pay us for three months this summer when we had a simple mailing ad- dress change from our street address to a P.O. box number,” Dr. Schmidt said. But Ms. Smith cut through the red tape and connected Dr. Schmidt to the right person at TrailBlazer Health Enterprises, the Medicare contractor for Texas, to re- solve each problem quickly. In the end, Ms. Smith’s efforts freed up nearly $15,000 in back payments to Dr. Schmidt that Medicare had held for months, seriously affecting his cash flow.
November 2011 TEXAS MEDICINE 19
JIM LINCOLN
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