Electronic Claims Processing

Electronic Claims Processing

One of the reasons that outsourcing your medical billing is so efficient, is because most medical billing firms use electronic claims submissions (ECS).

Studies show that only about 40% of medical billing claims are electronically processed when submitted directly by the physician’s offices. In 2003 over 6 billion insurance claims were filed, of that number, around 500 million were Medicare claims. Medicare pays two weeks faster if claims are filed electronically. They offer up this incentive to entice that other 60% of practices that are still filing claims manually with a CMS 1500 form to submit those claims electronically.

Another sobering reason to have your claims processed electronically by a medical billing company is that a whopping 30% of claims filed manually by private practices are rejected due to incorrect coding, typos, and plain old fashioned human error. When you allow a medical billing firm to submit your claims for you, due to their systems of check and balances in the coding and filing process, the error rate drops to around 1%-2%.

Congress has even mandated the formatting for ECS in an effort to increase the use of ECS and lighten the paperwork burden on Medicare.

The savings for allowing a medical billing company to handle submission of your claims are extraordinary. If you haven’t looked into it before, or you don’t feel you’re getting the level of service you should from your current medical billing company, look into using our services today. You’ll be glad you did!

View all Articles by: Melissa Clark, CCS-P