Outsourced underpayment recovery: a flat monthly cost, not a contingency fee
Paid less than your contract says? One specialist finds it and chases it.
A dedicated, full-time underpayment recovery specialist from Neon Link costs $2,995 a month, month to month, or $2,895 a month on the 6-month plan, with no setup fee and no share of what they recover. Working remotely from the Philippines or India on your US business hours, they load your contracted rates and fee schedules, check every ERA line against what the payer should have paid, and work each short payment through reprocessing requests, payer calls and appeals until it is paid or closed for a documented reason. It fits practices, groups and billing companies with enough payer volume that small shortfalls add up, while payer contract negotiation stays with you.
Rates come from our live rate card. Page updated .
See 3 candidate profiles for your role
Tell us the role. Within 48 hours our team emails you 3 anonymized profiles from people who applied for this kind of work with us: their experience, their region and the software they use.
What your Linker handles
- Build the expected payment table from your payer contracts and fee schedules, by payer, plan, CPT or HCPCS code and modifier, and keep it current when rates change
- Compare every ERA and EOB line against the expected amount and flag the short ones, by payer and by code
- Sort each variance by cause, such as the wrong fee schedule year, a multiple procedure or modifier reduction applied wrong, a bundling edit, a wrong place of service rate or a missed contract escalator
- Send reprocessing requests and reconsiderations through the payer portal or by phone, with the contract rate and the claim details attached
- Prepare appeal packets with the contract language behind each ask, for your sign off, and track every one to a decision
- Log every payer call with a reference number, a name, a date and the next step, so anyone can pick up the account
- Spot payers that underpay the same way again and again, and bring you the pattern with examples before your next contract talk
- Send the practice manager a short weekly note on underpayments found, recovered, still open and closed, by payer
We screen for the systems you run, such as Tebra (Kareo), AdvancedMD, eClinicalWorks, athenahealth, NextGen or Epic, the clearinghouses your ERAs come through, such as Availity, Office Ally or Waystar, and Excel for the rate tables. If a finalist has not used yours, you'll know before they start.
How the work is measured
What your Linker is measured on. The targets are set with you in the first week, from your volumes and your hours, and written into your statement of work.
- Every payment checked against the expected rate on the cadence you set, with each short payment flagged
- Every open underpayment carrying a current status and a next step
- Recovered amounts tracked by payer and by cause, so you can see what the work brings back
- Every payer call logged with a reference number, a name and a date
What a team costs
| Team | Month to month | 6-month plan |
|---|---|---|
| 1 Linker | $2,995 | $2,895 |
| 2 Linkers | $5,990 | $5,790 |
| 3 Linkers | $8,985 | $8,685 |
| 4 Linkers | $11,980 | $11,580 |
| 5 Linkers | $14,975 | $14,475 |
| 6 Linkers | $17,970 | $17,370 |
Per month. 40 hours a week per Linker. No setup fee. Prices from our live rate card.
How we vet your Linker
Our recruiting team in the Philippines runs a strict screening and review of every applicant, using a process built by our founder, Dan Betthauser, from twenty years running outsourced operations across the Philippines, Costa Rica and the United States. Every Linker goes through:
- A screen of the application against your role: the work, the software and the experience you need
- A recorded spoken English sample, reviewed by our team
- A practical skills test for your work, scored in our own system
- A live video interview with our recruiting team
- An ID check and a background check: NBI clearance in the Philippines, police clearance in India and Pakistan
- A workspace check before day one: a quiet, private room, wired internet, a backup connection and a plan for power outages
- A signed confidentiality agreement before they see any of your data
- Your own interview with the finalist: nobody starts until you say yes
How it starts
- Step 1Tell us the work: a 15 or 30 minute call with our team, or the sixty second scope on the homepage.
- Step 2Get a written quote at the published rate, held for 30 days.
- Step 3We recruit and screen for your work and your software, and you interview the finalist before they start.
- Step 4Your Linker works your queue on your hours. A Neon Link manager runs the account and answers when you need them.
- Step 5If the fit is wrong in the first 60 days, we swap them at no cost.
A good fit, and not a fit
- Practices and groups with several commercial payer contracts whose payments nobody checks line by line against the rate
- Billing companies that want to offer underpayment review to their provider clients without hiring for it in the US
- Owners paying a contingency recovery service a share of every dollar found who would rather pay one flat monthly rate
- Negotiating your payer contracts or deciding when to push back on a payer. Your Linker brings the numbers; you make the call
- Legal action, arbitration or federal independent dispute resolution over out of network payments. That stays with you and your counsel
- A practice with one or two payers and low volume, where a quarterly spot check by your own staff costs less
- Practices whose state Medicaid program or payer contracts do not allow patient data to be handled offshore. Check yours before you start
Open roles behind this page
We recruit for this work now. These are the live postings we hire your Linker from:
See 3 candidate profiles for your role
Tell us the role. Within 48 hours our team emails you 3 anonymized profiles from people who applied for this kind of work with us: their experience, their region and the software they use.
Questions owners ask
How much does it cost to outsource underpayment recovery?
$2,995 a month for one dedicated, full-time person (40 hours a week), month to month, or $2,895 a month on the 6-month plan. There is no setup fee, and pay, equipment and management are inside that one number. For comparison, a US medical records specialist costs about $5,990 a month fully loaded, using the BLS median wage plus employer costs.
Is a flat monthly rate cheaper than a contingency recovery service?
It depends on how much is out there. A contingency service takes a share of each dollar it recovers, so it costs nothing when it finds nothing and more as it finds more. One flat monthly rate costs the same whether the month brings back a little or a lot, and the same person keeps checking new payments every week, so short payments are caught while they are still easy to appeal. If your payers rarely pay short, a contingency service or an occasional audit costs less.
What do you need from us to start?
Your payer contracts and fee schedules, access to your practice management system and clearinghouse, and the payers you want worked first. Your Linker builds the expected rate table from those documents inside your systems, and you check it before they work a single claim against it.
How is patient information handled?
HIPAA requires a business associate agreement before an outside party handles patient information, so one is signed before your Linker sees any. Your Linker signs a confidentiality agreement, passes a background check, and works from a private space where patient information cannot be seen or overheard. We screen for people who understand the HIPAA minimum necessary rule and keep patient records off personal devices, and they work inside your systems with the access you give them. Some state Medicaid programs and payer contracts limit offshore access to patient data, so check yours before you start.
How is this different from hiring a virtual assistant?
You get one dedicated person who handles your work on your hours, inside your software, and a Neon Link manager runs the account: pay, equipment, replacement if it comes to that, and a phone that gets answered. You never run offshore payroll or manage a freelancer alone. It is not a ticket queue or a 24/7 answering line.
How fast can someone start?
We start recruiting when you say go. You interview the finalist before anyone starts, and the start date is set with you once you pick the person. We would rather take the time to find the right fit than hand you whoever is free.
What if the person is not the right fit?
If the fit is wrong in the first 60 days, we swap them at no cost. After that, if they leave, we recruit the replacement at no charge and manage the handover. Training on your process runs at the normal monthly rate.
Do we have to sign a long contract?
No. Month to month is available on every plan. The 6-month plan trades a longer commitment for a lower monthly rate. A written quote at the published rate is held for 30 days.
Related pages
- Medical Billing Companies: Claims follow-up, AR and denials, payer enrollment, the queues your team never gets to.
- Credit balance and refund specialist: What a dedicated specialist costs to work your credit balance report, fix posting errors and prepare patient and payer refunds for your approval.
- Secondary insurance billing specialist: What a dedicated specialist costs to bill secondary and tertiary payers after the primary pays, check Medicare crossovers and fix coordination of benefits problems.
1 US medical records specialist, fully loaded: ~$5,990/mo How we calculate this
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