Emergency Medicine Medical Billing

Emergency Medicine Medical Billing

Emergencies can not be planned and they can’t be scheduled. There are no preapprovals and a lot of times documentation is sparse and these are among the hardest medical billing claims to get paid.

Emergency procedures are performed in a fast paced environment and there can be several people performing multiple duties and not all those procedures get noted on the documentation. When it comes time to compile the medical billing form. The coding will have to considered carefully.

You obviously can’t have certain procedures done without others being included. For example there may not be the suturing procedure listed as it might have gotten missed in the documentation but you can not have a suture care coding without the suture procedure. Your medical billing partner knows to check these claims for such deficiencies.

The number one reason that medical billing claims generated through emergency procedures is rejected and/or denied is due to poor documentation. This can be supplemented through careful checking of the coding used. There is usually a time limit and a fast paced environment going on and as long as these documents are compiled by humans, there will be mistakes.

Emergency medicine is a high stress area of any practice and more than ever you need your claims to be double checked for accuracy and completeness.

Your medical billing partner can save you a lot of time, money, and grief by consulting with you and teaching you and your staff to properly code and document procedures handled in an emergency to improve your reimbursement rate.

View all Articles by: Melissa Clark, CCS-P