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Credentialing proves who you are. Contracting decides what you get paid. Owners routinely spend months on the first and zero minutes on the second, then live with the rates for years.

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Choose your panel deliberately

Don’t sign everything. Model the employer mix in your area, pick the 4-6 payers that cover most of it, and evaluate each on effective yield: contracted rate minus the cost of denials and rework, not the rack-rate fee schedule. Revisit annually. Dropping a bad payer is a legitimate business decision.

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Read the fee schedule before signing

Ask for the full fee schedule for your top 25 codes by expected volume, not the sample sheet. Check whether rates are pegged to a Medicare percentage (and which year’s Medicare), whether they can be changed unilaterally with notice, and what the multiple-procedure and assistant reductions are. Those top 25 codes are usually 80%+ of revenue, so this one spreadsheet is the whole negotiation.

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What’s actually negotiable

New solo practices have little leverage on headline rates, but these move more often than people think: rates on your top codes (ask for a Medicare-percentage bump, worst case is no), effective date (push for the application date, not the committee date), timely-filing window, and removal of all-products clauses. Leverage grows with volume, scarcity of your specialty in the network, and every renewal cycle. Groups and MSOs negotiate portfolios, which is much of why scaling changes the economics.

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Clauses that bite later

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After the signature

Confirm the effective date and load the fee schedule into your PM so underpayments surface automatically. Then do the operational half: portal registration and EFT/ERA.