Medical Billing Mistakes Can Cost Your Thousands

Medical Billing Mistakes Can Cost Your Thousands

Don’t let the federal government’s mistake cause your medical billing reimbursement to suffer. In September 2005, The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced that certain homecare contractors had made a medical billing mistake. It appears they had denied physicians payment for homecare services that should have been reimbursable. This medical billing error has negatively effected many organizations since then.

The Medicare denial of payment effected the skilled nursing facilities especially. When physicians did not receive payment for necessary services, they ended up charging the care facilities directly. Unfortunately, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services made a mistake. There were several services that should have been excluded from the consolidated billing that were not paid. The facilities ended up paying the price of this medical billing fiasco.

Physicians went after the facilities for their money. If this happened to your facility, be sure to double check all areas of your medical billing department. You may have ended up paying a substantial amount of money that was not necessary in the last few months.

There were 25 different medical billing therapy codes that were wrongly denied. It would be wise for facility to do an internal audit to be sure you did not wrongfully pay physicians money. To be sure you haven’t missed any wrong medical billing. Any claim received before October 13 should be closely reviewed.

This Federal government error just goes to show how important skilled medical billing staff members should be to your practice. Educated personnel would not pay out unnecessary money for wrongful claims and coding. Medical billing firms can help keep these payments in check as well. Knowing how much money should be going out and how much money should be coming into your practice is essential for successful medical billing.

View all Articles by: Melissa Clark, CCS-P