Brightree does right by providers

ATLANTA - Close to 200 of Pacware's 750 customers have committed to or are already in the process of converting to Brightree, company officials said in June.

"The acquisition's going well," said Brightree CEO Dave Cormack.

Brightree acquired Pacware earlier this year. It continues to support Pacware's client-server product, but it's also giving the company's customers the opportunity to convert to its web-based platform.

While software conversions make most providers cringe, Pacware's leader, Byron Maynard, and its 20 employees have remained onboard, making the switch to Brightree as painless as possible, Cormack said.

"The process is smooth, because we have both databases and we've done the mapping," he said. "The second thing is, there are no double fees. While transitioning to Brightree, customers still pay the old maintenance fee for Pacware, and once they're converted to Brightree, they can still have access to Pacware for free."

For customers that choose to remain on Pacware's system, Brightree has increased their monthly fee to, on average, $250, Cormack said (See related story).

"We think the fees that we moved to are more than reasonable," he said. "We can't have a loss-making support and development operation."

That support and development operation includes re-training some of Pacware's employees on the Brightree system to better serve customers that are converting and preparing for the Jan. 1, 2012, deadline for being compliant with new standards for electronic claims submissions (See related story).

"We need to do the right thing by our provider customers and our prospective provider customers, and I think the right thing is to invest with the view that they can see a return on investment in what we do," Cormack said.