Holistic Billing Services Blog

A realistic 90-day roadmap for acupuncture and massage therapy insurance credentialing: NPI and CAQH setup, payer applications, follow-up scripts, and effective dates, with direct links to enrollment portals.

What commercial payers actually pay for acupuncture by state, the difference between billed charges and allowable amounts, and the three most common reasons claims get cut.

One of the most common questions we get from both new and veteran practitioners  is whether a licensed acupuncturist can bill an Evaluation and Management (E&M) office visit alongside treatment. The short answer is, yes. In most jurisdictions, an LAc can report outpatient E&M codes (99202–99205 for new patients, 99211–99215 for established patients) within their […]

If you bill insurance at your practice, you already know submitting claims isn't as simple as emailing an invoice to Blue Cross or Aetna. Between your clinic’s practice management software and the payer’s claims adjudicator sits an essential middleman: the medical billing clearinghouse. Understanding what a clearinghouse does and why claims get stopped there, is […]

Running an integrative practice usually means balancing clinical needs with commercial realities. You want to focus on guiding patients toward recovery, but if your clinic accepts insurance, your clinical work is only half the equation. The other half is the administrative rigor that keeps your practice viable. Holistic healthcare including, acupuncture, medical massage, and integrative […]

Most marketing advice floating around our industry feels like it was written by an agency desperate to sell you a $3,000 monthly retainer. They want you running convoluted Facebook funnels, posting dance trends on TikTok, or blasting a $29 "exam and adjustment" Groupon to your entire zip code. The problem with that discount game is […]

Most acupuncturists and massage therapists didn’t open a clinic to fight with Availity, decode remittance advice, or sit on hold with insurance reps while patients wait in the lobby. You got into this to treat patients. But if you take insurance, your billing workflow dictates whether your practice stays open or bleeds cash. When billing […]

To our clients, future partners, and team members: Running an independent practice right now is tough. Across our industry, holistic practitioners, most of whom are solo operators or small, tight-knit teams, are getting squeezed from every direction. Inflation is driving up daily operating costs, technology vendors keep tacking on extra monthly fees, merchant processors take […]

Ask almost any licensed massage therapist (LMT) why they got into the profession, and they’ll tell you the same thing: they wanted to help people heal. But ask them about the biggest bottleneck in their practice, and you’ll hear a very different story: physical limits and income ceilings. Unlike desk jobs, massage therapy is physically […]

If you run an acupuncture practice, you’ve likely noticed a massive shift over the last few years: patients actively expect their health insurance to cover acupuncture. However, coverage isn't universal, and carrier policies vary wildly. Because Holbie processes the nation’s largest dataset of holistic health claims, we see real-world payment data long before industry reports […]

If you entered healthcare because you harbored a secret, burning passion for complex governmental math equations, congratulations! You are a unicorn. For the remaining 99.9% of us who got into practice to actually heal people—and who start sweating uncontrollably the moment insurance math enters the room—billing time-based codes can feel like an exercise in high-stakes […]

If you run a massage therapy practice or an integrative health clinic, you’ve likely been asked this question dozens of times by patients entering retirement age: “Does Medicare cover my massage therapy?” ​The short answer is no—Original Medicare (Part A and Part B) does not cover standalone massage therapy. ​However, as integrative care becomes more […]