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Welcome to the medical billing blog containing news and articles relating to medical billing, medical coding, ICD, HIPAA and practice management functions.

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Pregnant Patient Transfer Easy On Your Medical Billing

Pregnancy medical billing is a rather straightforward process. That is, unless the patient transfers practices in the middle of her prenatal care. Pregnancy transfers scare many medical billing personnel, however if you can remember three tips, maternity transfers will be a snap. How you do medical billing for a maternity transfer all depends on how many times she was seen in the clinic. If she was seen 1-3 times you always want to code those visits as evaluation and management visits. One thing to keep in mind is that the first antipartum visit is not as straightforward as you may think. Always keep track of the level of service (level

Published By: Melissa Clark, CCS-P on August 10, 2006

Universal Injection Code

As of January 1, 2006; changes were made regarding therapeutic and antibiotic injections medical billing claims that will affect your medical billing claims if you don’t update your filing methods. In the past there were separate injection administration codes for a therapeutic, prophylactic, diagnostic injection and an antibiotic injection. Instead of choosing to report administration of a prophylactic Synagis treatment (90378) with a 90782 (Therapeutic, prophylactic or diagnostic injection , you now simply use 90772 as a universal injection code. On E/M coding, you will generally still need to attach modifier 25 to insure you’re your claim is handled. Modifier 25 states that this procedure or other service was performed

Published By: Melissa Clark, CCS-P on August 9, 2006

Can You Bill Medicare – When the Patient Has Died

A confusing medical billing situation can arise when a patient dies en route or shortly after being admitted to a hospital. Many medical billers struggle with what to report or amount of procedures to report that were performed prior to the patient expiring. A good example would be a patient that presented in the ED for CPR direction. The ED physician tells EMS to perform defibrillation and administer medications. When EMS brings the patient into the ED, the doctor examines the patient and decides there isn’t cause to continue CPR and pronounces the patient dead. How should this be reported? Normally, on your medical billing form, you would usually bill

Published By: Melissa Clark, CCS-P on August 8, 2006

The Removal of Sutures

Medical billing allows for very little wiggle room in your descriptions and documentation. Almost all surgeries, whether performed in the doctor’s office, or in the operating room have a follow-up period. This means that during that particular 15-day, 30-day, 60-day, etc. period, any treatment the surgeon does for that surgery is included in the medical billing of the surgery itself. However, there is an exception to this rule. An example of an exception to this medical billing rule deals with mentally handicapped patients. The removal of sutures is usually a procedure performed within the postoperative follow-up period. Medical billing is usually done only for the surgery. However, if a mentally

Published By: Melissa Clark, CCS-P on August 8, 2006

Get Your Therapy Medical Billing Claims Paid

No type of medical billing claim raises more eyebrows with Carriers more than therapy bases medical billing claims. Most therapy claims are 100% legitimate but because of the amount of fraud that has been perpetrated by a few unscrupulous individuals all of these types of claims get closer looks than ever. One way to insure your claims are submitted correctly is to make sure the documentation is done absolutely accurately in your therapy department. In a recent audit of claims, the CMS found that the number one error in reporting therapy medical billing claims is with the minutes billed. Make sure the amount of therapy given to the patient is

Published By: Melissa Clark, CCS-P on August 7, 2006