All Articles Written by Kathryn Disney-Etienne, CCS-P, RT
All Articles Written by Kathryn Etienne, CCS-P - RETIRED
Welcome to the archived list of all medical billing articles written and previously posted to the site by Kathryn Etienne, CCS-P, retired Director of Operations.
All articles are listed below and categorized by date, newest to oldest. Click any article link below to read the entire article.
Why Outsource Medical Billing Claims?
Admit it, you’ve considered outsourcing your medical billing claims and then pushed that thought away because you thought that you would have to do too much rearranging in the way your claims were handled and you do not want to slow your reimbursement revenue flow to a trickle during a transition process. If you could seamlessly switch your medical billing claims to an outside firm without disrupting your cash flow for your practice would you be a little more relaxed about making a switch? It can be done easily if you do a graduated switch. An easy way to switch your medical billing claims to outsourcing is to simply start …
Outsourcing Makes Reimbursements Happen Faster
Think about it, would you ever think that sending your medical billing claims outside of your office could actually get them paid quicker? It doesn’t sound logical at first glace, but it’s very true the outsourcing your medical billing claims will usually get them paid faster. Think about how often your in-house staff gets interrupted, how often the crisis of the moment rears its ugly head and day to day managing of the office prevents them from filing, double checking accuracy, and following up on your submitted claims. Time is also lost re-submitting claims when they get kicked back for the smallest of errors in coding. As you know, Medicare …
Medical Billing Services Free Your Staff
If your staff is stretched to the limits handling patients and day to day business matters in your practice, it might be time to consider outsourcing your medical billing claims. When you outsource, your claims can become seamless and you will lose the hassles of keeping up with the latest criteria in coding and the paper chase of your medical billing is effectively over. Simply by outsourcing your medical billing claims, you can leave so many of the irritating and sometimes time consuming processes that are required to file your medical billing claims. Not only can your medical billing partner file your claims,they will follow up on those claims too. …
Ending Confusion on Multiple Procedures
When you have a patient that has had multiple procedures performed, make sure that the group of procedures that were performed actually require modified 51 before you attach it. The CPT has a list of certain coding that are exempt from modifier 51. The CPT manual designates modifier 51 (Multiple procedures) exempt codes with a “circle with a slash” symbol to the left of the code for the services rendered. There is usually a complete listing of modifier 51 exempt codes in an appendix. The list is “a summary of CPT codes that are exempt from the use of modifier 51 but have NOT been designated as CPT add-on procedures/services,” …
Understanding Review of Systems In Your Medical Billing
Combining history of present illness and review of systems is possible when doing medical billing. Many medical billers think this practice is breaking a rule or impossible. However, documenting an element once to account for HPI and ROS is perfectly legal when done correctly. The CMS states that physicians absolutely do not need to document an element two times just so the person performing medical billing knows it is meant to be used both for review of systems and history of present illness. It is perfectly acceptable to use an element for both. The only time an element cannot be used twice is when you attempt to use it in …
