Archive for The Month of June, 2006
Archive for the Month of June, 2006
Welcome to the medical billing blog archive for the month of June, 2006.
Here you will find links to every article added to the Outsource Management Group web site during the month of June, 2006.
You can browse this month's archives by clicking the "More" button from any of the excerpts below.
Thinking about a Career in Medical Billing?
Doctors are very busy these days treating patients in their offices, attending to surgeries, making their hospital rounds and answering important phone calls. They simply do not have the time to attend to the financial aspects of running a medical practice. Aside from nurses, receptionists, physician’s assistants and technicians every well-trained staff has at its core key people specifically designated to medical coding and billing. It shouldn’t be a surprise that there is an explosion of career opportunities in medical coding and billing. Estimates chart the growth of medical billing and coding careers at over 65% within the year 2005. This surging demand for specialists in this area accounts for …
If You’re Considering Hiring a Medical Billing Consultant
Physicians who need help managing billing in their offices may want to consider a company that specializes in medical billing consulting. Medical billing services help doctors get paid from insurance companies. But medical billing consultants often go a step further, and help doctors manage all their finances, from billing, to accounts receivable, to collections. Some medical billing consulting services work on-site as part of the practice management team. Others work off-site and only come into the office as needed to analyze what needs to be done. Many help to train employees to better handle billing, coding and reimbursement issues. They may also help to analyze workflow in doctors’ offices, to …
Medical Billing a Healthy Part of Modern Medicine
Medical billing is the practical management aspect of medicine and the way the healthcare provider gets paid. Without a good medical billing and coding foundation to base the billing of a practice on, the practice will cease to exist from lack of revenue. In legalese, the “face-to-face contact between healthcare professional and an eligible beneficiary” is known as “an encounter.” For every such “encounter,” there is a specific code. These codes exist for the sole purpose of identifying for the payer what they are paying for. The services rendered codes (CPT) must match the diagnosis code (ICD) for the payment to be deemed necessary and just. CPT medical coding books …
Reasons to Outsource Your Medical Billing
In a busy practice, the attending physicians have no time to compile their own medical billing. Keeping up the with lightening fast coding changes is hard enough without keeping up with the necessary documentation, making judgment calls on complex issues and then coding and compiling a superbill for each and every patient seen. This sounds overwhelming and time consuming and in the early days of many a practice, many physicians did do their own medical billing. Good practices grow and soon the doctor had hired someone to take care of paperwork and submission of all their medical billing claims. This person is usually called a PA or physician assistants. It …
Keep Your Medical Billing Records Accurate
The life’s blood of any practice is the reimbursement revenue from the medical billing forms. Practitioners rely on accurate medical billing and coding to get their claims paid and not denied. Before a patient appointment, medical billers should remember to: Remind patients to bring all pertinent documentsCopy insurance and ID cards before appointmentsGather accurate patient informationObtain signature on assignment of benefits and HIPAA formsCollect co-pay After a patient appointment, healthcare providers should make sure that a detailed record has been kept of the patient encounter. Include such information as complaints, diagnoses, treatments provided, procedures recommended, or follow-up necessary. Furthermore, all of this information should be entered on the charge sheet …
Medical Billing and the Test of Good Coding
Medical billing professionals have many tasks beyond medical billing, including medical billing database management, spreadsheets and basic accounting to name a few. What has become the most important aspect of medical billing, and arguably the most difficult part of the job, is the challenge of medical billing codes. What makes coding in medical billing such a challenge? Many aspects, but first it’s important to understand the purpose of medical billing codes. Medical billing codes are what physicians submit to insurance companies or HMO’s (health maintenance organizations) in order to receive payment for each patient visit. Or, as it’s referred to in medical billing terms, each encounter. Part of what makes …
Medicare Contracting Changes
When billing to Medicare, expect some medical reimbursement delays in the upcoming years. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is currently reforming contractor workload for medical billing claims that come in. The speedy implementation of this medical billing reform may lead to reimbursement delays and errors. Congress mandated that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services reform their contracting system. This needs to be completed by October of 2011. However, since estimates of huge savings have been made, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services wants to speed up this medical billing contractor reform. Their goal is to have it completed by 2009, which is two years earlier. This …
Do Not Use Social Security Numbers To Identify Patients
Personal identification numbers have been a big issue in medical billing in the current years. In the past, the use of social security numbers to identify patients in medical billing was completely acceptable. As a matter of fact, this was the norm. Now, with the increased risk of identity theft, the use of social security numbers in medical billing is taboo. Recently in Colorado there was an unfortunate incident with member identification numbers used for medical billing. Kaiser Permanente Colorado made a human error and put the user identification numbers on the mailing label of a member magazine. This meant that anyone handling the magazine had access to the medical …
Handling Denials Due to Limitations of Service
Getting a medical billing claim denied is one of the biggest problems you can have with your billing. One tricky medical billing claim that many practices get denied for is the service for counseling patients that smoke or seeking to quit smoking and received counseling for doing so. Many payers outright reject any claim that has anything to do with tobacco, including counseling for the stoppage of its use. The patients either have zero coverage for this service or they get a limited number of counseling visits and those are normally less than full reimbursements. If the patient has already seen another physician regarding these services, you will have just …
The Trouble with Disease Management Medical Billing
Medical billing for disease management is not working for many insurance companies. Disease management has been a trend in the recent years. However, model programs are being shut down all over the country. Lack of interest is the downfall of these disease management programs. Medical billing and revenue for the year will fall due to disease management closings. A model disease management program, HeartPartners will be closing ten months early. The payer, PacifiCare Health Systems, cannot take any more medical billing loss. They were severely short on beneficiaries. They anticipated 15,000 beneficiaries, however only 3750 people actually enrolled in the program. Disease management is intended to educate patients about their …
