Saturday, December 19, 2015

Mountain Health Clinic

Del Rio is a small town in upper East Tennessee surrounded by the Cherokee National Forest and the French Broad River.

In The Beginning

The idea for a clinic started with my cousin, Tina, and I on a road trip to Lake Lure, NC. It had humble beginnings as a free clinic because we didn't know what else to do, so we just did it free. 

First, we needed a place to hold the free clinic. The community center came to mind. We spoke with Tammy, went to the meeting of the board, and were approved to have it rent-free anytime it wasn't already booked.

We held our first clinic in September and saw ten people.

Second clinic, about 7 people.

We then decided there wasn't a great interest in this free endeavor and people were asking us to open a "real clinic." There were many Medicare and Medicaid patients in the area.

I started by hiring my friend, Dawn, to help with the credentialing.
Things we learned:

First: come up with a clinic site. We were lucky with the Community Center, but it will be more expensive when we outgrow it. They even had a phone and free wi-fi.
I spent $800 on an attorney and probably didn't need to. He did the LLC paperwork and drew up the articles of Organization.
Get a clinic name (LLC). This was $300.00
Get a supervising physician if required. This will cost whatever you and he/she decide.
Get insurance. $1100 - $
Once you have the LLC, you will need to get a business license in the County where the clinic is located. You can have the billing/mailing address at your house even if it's in another county. This was $15.
While you are at the court house, you will need to go to the Register of Deeds office and file/register your Articles of Organization. This was $7.

You'll need someone to help you with the credentialing paperwork if you have a full time day job, because hours and hours are spent on the phone, on hold and getting nowhere fast. If it's an option, use email first - we got quicker answers that way. 

Go to the Medicare website cms/gov and update your profile. You can do this online. I found I was still credentialed with four previous employers and had to remove them. 

Go to the Medicaid site for your state and look for provider links and follow the instructions. This, again, gets very frustrating and cumbersome. If you have someone who's done this before, it will help tremendously.

No comments:

Post a Comment