Need for behavior health drives growth for Napa medical billing services firm SyMed
The beginnings of SyMed Corporation go back three and a half decades, but it’s been in the past two years when one of California’s most established providers of medical billing and revenue analysis software has seen the steepest growth in its own revenue.
While the health care industry itself is growing, SyMed’s specialty in mental health has brought its services into the spotlight as more children are diagnosed with autism spectrum conditions. And as the pandemic restrictions and isolation stretched into the middle of last year, SyMed’s customers were seeing an influx of behavioral health patients.
“I’m not happy about that,” Roosa said. “That’s not how I want to grow.”
SyMed debuted on the Inc. 5000 national list of fast-growing companies this year at No. 4,381 with 63% revenue growth over 2017–2020, the magazine’s ranking metric.
The company billing, accounts receivable management, data analysis, software and computer technology solutions to health care providers in five states.
While SyMed’s product portfolio has evolved to offer more cloud-based services, the company itself has had to work through how much of its workforce can work remotely amid the surges of coronavirus infections in the community while operating under patient-privacy and fiduciary best practices, Roosa said.
Checks received from insurance companies must be received and processed with two people watching at the same time. And any medical records that are received on paper must be scanned by hand. So the company rotates in some employees into the Napa office one day a week
A programmer by background, Roosa came up with the SyMed concept in the mid-1980s when he was running an outpatient clinic in Los Angeles, and a physician asked him to create billing software, as none suitable were on the market, Roosa told the Napa Valley Register.
Jeff Quackenbush covers wine, construction and real estate. Before the Business Journal, he wrote for Bay City News Service in San Francisco. He has a degree from Walla Walla University. Reach him at jquackenbush@busjrnl.com or 707-521-4256.
