IBSI has been our birth center billing service since 2008 at which time we had been open for less than 6 months and were unable to properly bill to collect from insurance companies and Florida Medicaid. Fast forward 13 years and we are so grateful for IBSI whose service has kept in business through the tough times including when systems fail and no one is at fault. No in-house biller can manage this! Marnie and her team are strong advocates for midwives and birth centers. They fight for every claim and you can’t find any better anywhere!

I was a client of Marnie’s way back at the beginning in the early 2000’s when I had a solo homebirth practice. She was a lifesaver in helping me get better reimbursement and in taking the burden of managing claims off my shoulders. Twenty years later I have come to IBS Inc for consulting on birth center startup. She helped me with the revenue projections which were a key part of our business plan that we took to the banks seeking startup funds. She also helped me explore EMR’s and shared key questions to ask during that process. Her experience and ability to really see into our current needs while laying a foundation upon which to build our much larger vision has been a confidence booster during the very complex process we are undertaking. I am so grateful knowing that she’s there if I get “stuck” and need her insight or advice. She’s a vital resource to our team, and is able to ‘right-size’ what she offers according to our need and budget while also being very generous with her knowledge and ideas. I have recommended her services often over the decades.

As a consultant to many birth centers, I have had the opportunity to review the billing practices of those who use an internal billing employee/owner and those who use various third-party billing companies. I can highly recommend IBSI, for the simple reason that it is more than worth what it costs. They have a team of experts, so a birth center never needs to worry that claims will not be filed and followed up timely because someone is on vacation or out sick. IBSI operates ethically according to the latest guidelines, so birth centers do not have to worry about being accused of fraud. Since they operate nationally, they are often aware of problems with a particular payer, and they can alert their clients about how to deal with the problem. Because IBSI’s owner has a history of practicing midwifery herself, IBSI is dedicated to ensuring that midwives receive everything they are entitled to, not just the “low-hanging fruit,” such as the global payments. IBSI’s statistics for aging receivables is tough to beat: a typical example I have seen is Current – 67%; 30 days – 18%; 60 days – 7%; 90 days – 1%; 120+ days – 7%. When I was hired to run one birth center, they had just switched from an internal biller to IBSI. IBSI was able to recover *$400,000* in uncollected past revenue. In another case where I consulted, she recovered over $100,000, including dates of service some two years prior. Finally, a range of services is offered, including use of an electronic health record, working out financial agreements with clients, credentialling, and contracting. Timely payment of all of the revenue that is truly earned makes IBSI a real value for the sustainability of midwives and birth centers!

Cynthia B. Flynn, CNM, PhD, FACNM
Past President, American Association of Birth Centers

Marilyn and the rest of the Innovation billing team have been great to work with and are on it!

I initially had some issues with a couple of things, but that was due to some business hour mistakes on my end and they scheduled a meeting to go over all of my questions with several team members to made sure I felt heard and that all questions were answered.

Thank you to Marnie, Sharon, and Migdalia for the meeting and assistance and a special thank you to Marilyn for calling me after 10:00 PM EST to get me the information I asked for!

We were having a very good experience with MBSI until we had to adopt an EMR that had a billing function. At that point MBSI slowed their services to almost no service and then no service. Our agreement was that they would handle all business up to our “Go Live” date and would give us all information to follow up on AR’s and refunds. Only after having our lawyer write (and it took 2 letters) did they belatedly supply us with limited and incorrect information leaving us with a loss of many thousands of dollars and no idea of those folks owed a refund. If you go with them, get it in your contract that they will finish business that they are supposed to handle. I am so disappointed because I was really grateful to them up until that point and would have recommended them to anyone who could use their service.