BEND, Ore. -- Bend Memorial Clinic announced Wednesday that it will bring the customer service team associated with the billing process back in-house on Dec, 1, just over four years after contracting with a Pennsylvania firm to handle billing services.

The change is anticipated to add five positions to provide for a new local Total Customer Care Center, the clinic said.

“With billing and insurance complexities on the rise, our customers depend on us to provide in-depth assistance and information about their accounts and claims in a timely and helpful manner,” said Barbara Derebery, the clinic's chief financial officer.

“Having a Customer Service team located in Bend, that knows our customers, our clinic and our providers, allows us to better deliver on our promise of TotalCare™,” Derebery added.

“Customers have been coming to BMC for decades because of the outstanding care they receive from our providers," Derebery said in a clinic news release. "We are now confident that the customer service to support our billing process will be of the highest caliber.”

In June of 2006, the clinic announced that it would begin outsourcing its billing to MED3000, a Pittsburgh-based company, that fall, a contract aimed at gaining efficiency and giving patients "a better billing process than what we could provide ourselves," a BMC spokeswoman told The Bulletin.

Although 30 jobs were being eliminated, employees were encouraged to apply for other open positions.

The spokeswoman said it was the first layoffs she was aware of at the clinic, which had close to 600 employees. An April 2009 survey by Economic Development for Central Oregon found BMC had 510 employees, ranking in the top 10 of Central Oregon employers.

The clinic said the positions for the new Total Customer Care Center will be posted on BMC’s website www.bendmemorialclinic.com, in the coming weeks.

Other billing work, not involving the customer service team, still will be done out of MED3000's Illinois office, the clinic noted.

Bend Memorial Clinic includes more than 100 providers offering over 30 specialties including Urgent Care, Primary Care, Specialty Care, Imaging and sub-specialty medicine. With five locations, BMC bills itself as the largest multi-specialty group in Central Oregon and "provides quality, convenient healthcare known as TotalCareTM."