Medical Billing Blog with Medical Billing & Coding Info & Articles

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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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The Blog Currently Contains 1,260+ Healthcare Articles

Are Your Using the Common Working Files With CMS?

The biggest medical billing problem is getting denied payment for a claim. A service for which many patients are denied is smoking or tobacco-use cessation counseling. Payers have a hard time paying for this service. The patient either has no coverage, or is only allowed a certain amount of counseling sessions for the smoking cessation purpose. What happens if another physician has already done medical billing for these counseling sessions? Chances are, you would not get paid. The centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services have come up with a medical billing solution to let you know how many sessions a patient has already used. Let’s say you know your patient

Published By: Melissa Clark, CCS-P on July 13, 2006

Medical Billing for Type A Claims

Many times, one medical billing mistake with a Part A claim can cost thousands of dollars. Proper training can eliminate most of these errors. Consolidated medical billing should be engrained into the heads of your personnel. There are some basic tips you should follow when doing consolidated medical billing. There are several medical billing charges that should be excluded when it is a hospital providing the service to the patient. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services gives this list to exclude: computerized axial tomography scans, ambulatory surgery in the operating room, MRI, cardiac catheterizations, radiation therapy, angiography, emergency room services, venous and lymphatic procedures, and ambulance services related to

Published By: Melissa Clark, CCS-P on July 12, 2006

How Secure is Your Patients’ Information?

Medical billing uses some very confidential patient information. It is the responsibility of your medical practice to protect this personal information for your patients’ safety. Making one confidentiality mistake can ruin your practice and your security for a lifetime. Patients trust you with their health, their lives, and their personal medical billing information. If you do not have a trustworthy practice, you will not have any patients. It is a regulation that PHI must not be left unattended or unlocked in or on someone’s desk. Many medical billing personnel will get too comfortable with the people they work with and will leave billing information laying out on their desks. This

Published By: Melissa Clark, CCS-P on July 12, 2006

Medicare No Longer Filling in Blank Forms

Previously, when claims came in with incorrect ICD-9 medical billing, the Medicare carriers would make the proper corrections and then reimburse. They would correct diagnosis codes and fill in the blanks if they were empty. This was lazy medical billing on the part of the provider. Now Medicare personnel will no longer do that. They now require correct medical billing in order to reimburse for Medicare part B services. If a claim is sent in by a diagnostic center, this center must use the diagnosis code given by the referring physician for medical billing. If, for some reason, the physician does not provide a diagnosis, the personnel at the diagnostic

Published By: Melissa Clark, CCS-P on July 11, 2006

Don’t Use Social Security Numbers for Patient Identification

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. An eye opening experience happened 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

Published By: Melissa Clark, CCS-P on July 11, 2006