No one likes the word "audit" but sometimes it can help your practice. When it's coming from the IRS or other authority office, an audit can be a major stressor; when you enlist the services of a third party partner to do an audit on the way your medical billing is filed - there are no penalties - only pluses!

An internal audit of the way your medical coding and billing is handled can alert you to problems you may not have even been aware existed. Staff members can be adverse to change and continue using coding combinations that do not result in the maximum reimbursement for your services.

When you're not receiving the monies due for the procedures that are done for your patients, this method of filing your medical billing claims is actually costing you money. An internal audit can point out this omissions and help you get everyone on the same page for the filing of your medical billing claims.

If a large number of discrepancies in your medical billing are found, you may want to consider outsourcing your medical billing claims to your third party partner to allow them to be properly coded and billed with the correct combinations of codings and modifiers that will result in the maximum reimbursements for your medical billing claims every time. Most practices report increases of up to 25% of their reimbursable income within the first few months of switching to outsourcing their medical billing claims and a rejection rate of around 1% as opposed to greater numbers of rejected medical billing claims by practices that still file inhouse.

Labels: audit, medical-billing, medical-coding