Great Lakes Billing Has Family-Friendly Workplace

When three women founded  in 1999, they agreed to be family-friendly from day one. It was the only way, inasmuch as they were based at partner Karen Ripma’s home and she had three school-aged children. 

Ripma and her partners, Katie Rahill and Rahill’s sister, Mary Ellen "Mimi" Shaughnessy, were all experienced in ambulance billing, and had enough of the family-unfriendly work place.

Twelve years later, most of their employees, 16 to 18 of them depending on the season, are mothers who work from home. And their staff retention is excellent, Ripma said.  

"It’s a tough job balancing what needs done at home and on the job," Rahill said. "It got easier when the kids got school-aged."

Their commitment to family-friendly hasn’t interfered with the company’s success, either. Their ambulance billing business thrives with contracts to work with 35 communities, including Mayfield Heights and Highland Heights.

Each partner has her own bailiwick. Rahill is the pitch person; Ripma does IT, and Shaughnessy focuses on client retention.

"Mimi has a special gift for remembering the first names of everyone she’s ever met," Rahill said. "People will call and say, "Mimi is the only person who remembered my birthday.'"

Not surprisingly, most of their business comes from referral from current clients, Rahill said. "We’ve had steady, manageable growth."

Rahill and Ripma laugh as they remember the business’s first weekend, when they passed out business cards and hoped no one would call until Monday – when the phone would be connected.

"Because of our backgrounds, we knew how to do it (billing), but we had to convince people we could," Ripma said. "Our first few months were really interesting."