ACU-Serve grows with right sourcing

CUYAHOGA FALLS, Ohio - ACU-Serve has responded to rampant consolidation in the HME industry by revamping its business model.

When a provider signs on to have its billing outsourced to ACU-Serve, the company now offers to take over its billing staff, train them and put them to work on that and other accounts. This positions ACU-Serve to better meet the needs of increasingly larger providers.

“Doing it this way allows us to have the people we need when we need them,” said Jim Knight, CEO. “It solves the people problem, so we can grow faster.”

Traditionally, when a provider decides to outsource, it lets go of much of its billing staff and the billing company hires more of its own staff if necessary.

ACU-Serve's big-picture: to use the model to create billing centers across the country, Knight said.

“It's right sourcing,” he said. “Our goal is to consume valuable billing resources and get more out of them.”

ACU-Serve has also shaken up its management team—Knight and business partner Tim Meadows have bought out co-founders Tim and Angie Barone, and installed Cindy Hoyt as COO—and added two account managers, Samantha Haynam and Yvette Nugent, to act as “mini-CEOs” for the company's provider clients, helping them to identify new opportunities for growth.

“It's all about building infrastructure to serve more and bigger customers,” Knight said.

Additionally, ACU-Serve has boosted its service offerings. For example, it now offers audit services through a partnership with The Audit Team's Stephanie Greene.

“We're trying to build a pool of resources that can interject where providers need help,” Knight said. “Maybe they don't want to outsource their billing, but they need help with accommodating growth or covering a maternity leave.”

In the not-too-distant future, ACU-Serve envisions a future where the HME industry will be made up of national, hospital-based and regional providers. 2014 is all about being prepared to meet the demands of that changing landscape, Knight said.

“There's a lot of doom and gloom in this business,” he said. “We want to be a solution to providers to find better ways to do business and thrive in this tumultuous environment.”