Thursday, February 17, 2005

Free business ideas: outsourcing claims processing for patients AND a web site for business idea distribution and related services

For various reasons we spend a fair bit of time in our household dealing with errors in healthcare claims processing. (See also my prior post!)

Both providers and payors commonly make errors in healthcare claims processing. It's a complex process in which failure is not merely an accident, it's an emergent property of the system. Ultimately we (ok, my wife) is called upon to resolve the errors.

The work of error resolution is tedious and time consuming. We would like to outsource it; we'd be willing to pay a good amount per claim to have someone else track payment, make calls, resolve complaints. I think this could be a viable business. A reasonably well designed set of processes could probably turn a tedious chore for a person into a routine 5-15 minute task for a well run business. At $15 per managed error each worker could bring in about $90 an hour. Increased automation could improve that earnings stream substantially.

Perhaps some enterprising bookkeeper, working at home, would want to launch such a business. If they kept costs low they could grow it off cash flow (early profitability) while gaining expertise and scaling upwards.

Anyone want to try? No rights reserved on this idea!

PS. Here's another business idea. Set up a web site where one could submit requests for new businesses. Charge $2 to people who want to outline a business they'd like someone to deliver. Then support the site by advertising and on revenue for business requests. All ideas would enter the public domain. For an extra fee charge would-be entrepreneurs for business-process patent searches around the business ideas. Then grow the web site with additional services around implementing the business proposals. This business could be fairly big and interesting -- except the barriers to entry are low so the competition would be significant. Maybe eBay or Amazon would buy a well run startup.

I come up with business ideas all the time. They're all for things I'd like to have. I'm happy to give them away. So here are two business ideas for today. No rights reserved, but if they're not patented I've just placed them in the public domain. So don't try to patent them.

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