October 2005 Medicare Won’t Honor Paper Claims

October 2005 Medicare Won’t Honor Paper Claims

Medicare has big changes for claim medical billing practices! As of October 1, 2005 Medicare will no longer be accepting paper claims or non-compliant electronic claims. If providers do not follow these guidelines, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will return a claim unprocessed with orders to submit with the correct medical billing guidelines.

Take some relief in knowing that this can save your practice money. First of all, paper medical billing claims are not cost effective for your practice. Postage is necessary as well as the cost of paper. Electronic claims don’t have these added costs. Another benefit to electronic medical billing is the quick efficiency. Paper claims can take weeks to get processed. Electronic claims only take days, and sometimes mere hours to get processed. The only thing you need to pay for when using electronic medical billing is the software. Don’t worry about this. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will be providing practices with free or inexpensive software to use.

Not only do these medical billing claims need to come through electronically, but they also need to be on compliant forms. CMS states that they do not believe this will be a problem. In June of 2005 only 0.5% of providers that billed CMS had noncompliant electronic claims. This means they project one provider out of two hundred would get a returned claim. In time they hope for the accuracy to improve.

To ensure your medical practice is reimbursed quickly and accurately, it is beneficial to use an outside medical billing company. These companies make it their business to have compliant forms and accurate claims. In the long run, your company will save a lot of money by outsourcing medical billing responsibilities.

View all Articles by: Melissa Clark, CCS-P