Medical Billing Blog: Section - Medical Billing
Archive of all Articles in the Medical Billing Section
This is the archive containing links to all articles written in the Medical Billing section of our blog.
Click any of the article links below to read the entire article or browse another section to the right to read articles on another subject.
Getting Those "Q" Modifiers Right For Medicare
Remember when medical billing used to be a simple affair of matching the procedure done with a couple of medical billing codes to describe what was done, attaching your documentation and then submitting your medical billing claim for reimbursement? Now we have codes for codes and modifiers and the need to when to bundle and when to not bundle with the goal being fair reimbursement for procedures done. Modifiers cause a lot of confusion for many medical billers. One such confusing modifier that is worth clarifying is Q6. This applies to Medicare medical billing claims only, but in a nutshell when one of your staff physicians takes a leave of …
Switch to Oursourcing Your Medical Billing in 2008!
Outsourcing your medical billing claims to a third party partner may be one of the smartest business moves you make in 2007. You may have had every intention of doing your own medical billing for your practice from the day you opened until the day you retired, however with the never ending changes and nuances in medical billing claims varying from cancelled codes to nonpayment of certain procedures because they simply weren’t reported correctly – there comes a time when you need to look at your revenue flow from your reimbursements and decide it might be time to outsource your medical billing claims. Another reason to outsource is the small …
Don’t Be Baffled By Long Term Care Claims!
Long term care medical billing has it’s own set of nuances that must be followed in order to ensure that you receive proper reimbursements for the services you provide. Since nearly every patient you treat will have a long term history of care – it’s sometimes tempting to skimp on the medical documentation and necessity but since you have no way of knowing who is going to review your claim, you need to handle every claim as a fully individual manner complete with full documentation or you may wind up with partially paid claims or outright denials of your medical billing claims. One important thing to learn is when you …
Before You Code…..
Don’t even crack your code book unless you’ve done the following three things: Number 1 – Make sure that your ICD-9 codes book is from the current billing year. New codes are issued on October 1st of every year. Make that your Medical Billing New Years and put up the previous year’s code book to ensure that you don’t make a mistake and code from the incorrect set of codes. Number 2 – State by reviewing the diagnostic statements and make yourself a side list choosing the conditions you need to code in order to make sure you don’t miss anything when you’re choosing the proper ICD-9 codes. Number 3 …
Report – HHA’s and Hospices Are Billing Medicare Accurately
A recent report showed that HHA’s (home health agencies) and hospices are billing Medicare on an accurate level according to a report compiled by the CMS’ Comprehensive Error Rate Testing. The report showed that HHAs had a 1.4 percent error rate and hospices a 1.0 percent error rate in the November CERT report, which covers claims from April 2006 to March 2007. DME (durable medical equipment) suppliers had a wide range of error rates broken out by supplier type. The lowest was 0.6 percent for a medical supply company with prosthetic/orthotic personnel certified by an accrediting organization while the highest was a whopping 51 percent for “unknown supplier/provider” where it …
