If you’ve ever had to deal with an insurance company on a medical bill, you know why Marsha Besley is in business.
Even brain surgeons don’t want anything to do with it.
Besley’s Cerritos-based Marina Medical Billing Services Inc. handles bills and other services for emergency room doctors.
The company, which Besley started on her living room floor in 1981, does data entry, bill coding, collections, banking, accounting and takes care of other things for doctors.
Besley, Marina’s president, was honored at last week’s Excellence in Entrepreneurship Awards luncheon put on by the Business Journal. The awards luncheon was held at the Hyatt Regency in Irvine.
Billing issues are about the last thing that comes to mind in an emergency room, where doctors are obliged to treat anyone needing care. Payment, if any, is sorted out later.
Besley said she sees her company playing a key role in the delivery of medical care.
“If we are more successful (at getting doctors paid), the medical groups are able to hire more doctors,” she said. “We can improve the healthcare system.”
Marina grew out of challenges faced by Besley’s former husband, Tom Besley, a doctor who managed the emergency room at an Anaheim hospital.
Tom Besley and his emergency colleagues were responsible for their own coding,reading a patient’s medical record and converting it to a five-digit code for reimbursement.
So they hired a billing company to handle the work. A mess ensued. Doctors went unpaid.
Marsha Besley, who knew nothing about medical coding and billing, was asked to step in and help.
She took the paperwork, sat down on her living room floor in her Huntington Harbor home and got to work.
“This was a small company (born out of) a personal family need,” Besley said.
She called the company Marina Medical Billing after the view from her Huntington Harbor home.
Marina has grown to more than 350 workers and 80 clients, including hospitals and medical groups, in California, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Georgia and South Carolina.
The company handles billing and other services for 2,000 doctors, Besley said.
“We grew via word of mouth,” she said.
Marina eventually outgrew Besley’s home and moved into an office near Huntington Harbor. It then moved to Bolsa Avenue in Huntington Beach. In 2001, Marina moved to its current 44,000-square-foot building, just across the county line in Cerritos.
Marina lured investment from private equity firms.
In 2003, Chicago’s Prospect Partners LLC took an undisclosed stake in the company. Before that, Newport Beach’s Marwit Capital invested in Marina.
In 1999, former investment banker Michael Connellan joined as chief executive. Connellan’s career stops include Alex, Brown & Sons, now part of Deutsche Bank AG, and GranCare Inc., now Mariner Health Care Inc. of Atlanta.
Connellan declined to give Marina’s yearly revenue. The company handles some $600 million worth of emergency claims yearly, he said.
Dealing with health maintenance organizations and care for those without insurance are challenges, according to Besley.
