Vanessa Best

President and CEO
Precision HealthCare Consultants
North Baldwin, N.Y.

Vanessa Best learned to live without fear by watching her mother carry on even as she coped with a brain tumor for the last 10 years of her life. Best’s fearlessness was put to the test when she sought to establish clientele at the beginning of her career as a medical consultant. “I approached my first client by detailing my skill set and assured her that I was equipped with the expertise needed to meet the task,” Best recalls. The approach worked and she has retained that client for more than 14 years. The success of that first experience gave her the confidence to expand her firm, offering services to both large and small clients.

In her 20-year career, Best has worked with businesses in different sectors. Two examples are The Fidelity Group in financial services and Cornell University Medical College in academia. She has been the president and CEO of Precision HealthCare Consultants, a medical billing and consulting firm, since 1995. The firm handles coding, auditing, billing and software sales training and conversion to electronic medical records. Best is also the author of the e-book “How to Jumpstart a Successful Medical Billing Service.” “It’s really gratifying to be able to assist others to achieve financial independence through a rewarding career,” says Best.

Among the accolades and recognition she has received, two stand out: She was chosen as a keynote speaker at the Black Enterprise Entrepreneurs Conference in 1999 and DELL Inc. named her company a “Small Business to Believe In.” She is credentialed with the Academy of Professional Coders as a certified procedural coder (CPC) and with the American Health Information Management Association as a physicians-based certified coding specialist (CCS-P). For now, she plans to continue building networks within her field, spend time with her husband and three children, and give life her best shot.