Incorrect Medical Coding Can Cost You

Incorrect coding of your medical billing claims is the number one reason for loss of revenue in most practices. Simply put, if you’re not coding correctly, you’re losing money. Sometimes your medical billing claims will be partially paid, other times they will be completely denied.

This causes lost time because your staff will need to go back, pull the file, verify what procedure was done, look up the code to make sure it hasn’t change and refile and resubmit the claim. When you consider on the average about 30% of paper claims are denied or kicked back for errors, throw in the fact sometimes medical billing codes can change 4 times in one year, you’re spending a lot of time and money on medical billing claims you are not getting reimbursed for. You may think the remedy would be to hire an additional person to handle your medical billing in-house, this would be a good example of “throwing money after money”.

This is a good time to think about outsourcing your medical billing claims. You will move the avalanche of paperwork out of your office and free your staff up to help you run your practice and service patients.

Your medical billing partner keeps up with the current and anticipated changes in your industry. They know the coding and they also have a system of quality control to review claims prior to submission to insure they are filed correctly and you get fully reimbursed in a timely manner. Reimbursement time for paper claims is about 4 weeks, electronic claims filed by your medical billing partner will see a check sent to you for medical claim reimbursement within about 2 weeks. This will enable you to begin having a reimbursement cash flow that you can count on to grow and build your practice even larger.

View all Articles by: Melissa Clark, CCS-P