About Transparent Billing

Higher returns begin with better relationships

Everyone wants to do business with people they like and trust. Rather than fighting with insurance providers on your behalf, we focus on building positive relationships with them.

This genuine rapport allows insurance providers to trust that your claims are accurate, therefore they process them faster and reimburse you at a higher rate.

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Joe Richards, CEO 

Joe began his career in 2006 at a long–term residential facility serving young adults in recovery from addiction. Over the course of his career in direct practice, Joe has held positions as a case manager, recovery mentor, residential director, family communications specialist and IOP program manager. He has worked both in the private and public sectors. He received his B.A. from Northern Arizona University in 2013 with a focus in applied human behavior and an emphasis in community development and sustainability. 

Upon completion of his degree, Joe transitioned from direct client care to the clinical side of insurance billing, starting work as a utilization review professional at a large medical billing company that specialized in behavioral health. In a year’s time he was promoted to director of the utilization review department and given the task of developing training programs for the company’s clients to assist with the transition to the ICD 10 coding system and the use of the DSM 5 diagnostic system. While completing the training for roughly 70 facilities, he began to recognize the need for additional education regarding compliance with payor guidelines for program structure, documentation and demonstrating medical necessity.  

Using his education and background in direct client care, he then developed training programs to assist clinicians in understanding insurance, providing onsite training and consultation for numerous facilities. As a result of implementing what they learned, facilities experienced enhanced earning capacity through improved insurance authorizations, better record appeal results and reduced audit risks. 

After developing clinical training for the billing company, Joe realized that facilities could benefit even more from targeted help regarding integration of billing and clinical services. Wanting to work more intensively with facilities, he started consulting independently toward the end of 2017. Since then he has worked with many facilities to streamline their billing processes, documentation systems and utilization review processes and develop their programs in a way that maintains their unique vision of recovery with respect to the constraint of working with private insurance. 

It is Joe’s belief that billing departments do not work independently of clinical departments but are a function of the clinical department. In short, billing should follow clinical, it should never lead. This ensures that ethical billing practices are always maintained, and it results in increased claim adjudication rates. By maintaining ethical practices, facilities enjoy long–term success, as opposed to short–term boosts in revenue related to upcoding, miscoding and overbilling that lead to audits, recoups and denials.  

What makes Joe unique is his understanding of clinical and billing. Whereas most billing professionals do not have the educational and professional background to understand the services they are billing for, the context they are billing them in, what it is like working directly with clients and their loved ones or overseeing a staff that carries out these tasks, Joe does. Joe’s billing philosophy and commitment to helping individuals recover work to ensure the best results for all those who are invested in the recovery process–practitioners, owners, clients and the clients’ loved ones.