Medical Billing Blog with Medical Billing & Coding Info & Articles
Welcome to the Medical Billing and Coding Blog
Welcome to the medical billing blog containing news and articles relating to medical billing, medical coding, ICD, HIPAA and practice management functions.
2004-2024 Celebrating 20 Years of Healthcare RCM Articles
The Blog Currently Contains 1,265+ Healthcare Articles
HIPAA And Code Sets
Imagine this scenario: What if your medical billing claims were suddenly rejected at a rate of up to 25%. Sound like a nightmare? You bet it does,but it could happen to your practice if you don’t keep up with HIPAA regulations and current coding changes that occur many times per year. That is a huge chunk taken out of your reimbursement revenue, and could easily be avoided through proper filing of your medical billing claims. On Oct. 16, 2003, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) took effect and with that a new set of standards for the transactions and code sets that you use every day …
Medicare To Verify Necessity Of More Medical Billing Claims
There is currently a medical billing demonstration taking place that may lead to increased medical necessity reviews. Currently, the states of New York, California, and Florida are involved in a pilot demonstration led by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has hired a Recovery Audit Contractor (RAC) to do extensive evaluation of medical billing claims for three years. You may be asking: What does this medical billing audit mean to your practice? If the demonstration in these three states is successful and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services are able to recover money in medical billing overpayments, it could mean a …
How Your Neighbor’s Cost Report Can Cost Your Medical Billing
If you thought your IPPS (inpatient prospective payment system) has nothing to do with medical billing and reimbursement, then think again. Not only will your 2003 IPPS effect your own medical billing, but now your neighbor’s IPPS will effect your 2007 reimbursement as well. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced that they will use the 2003 hospital medical billing index data to figure the 2007 payments. That means that if you were not completely accurate with your IPPS, then your reimbursements in 2007 will be skewed. CMS also announced that they will only calculate one wage per state for hospitals outside of the core-based statistical areas. This means …
Inpatient Medical Billing Consultant Choices Diminish in 2006
For a long time there has been a confusion about when to use inpatient follow-up consultation codes. In 2006, this will no longer be an issue, there will only be one type of inpatient consultation service: initial and subsequent. Follow up inpatient consultation codes will no longer be used in medical billing. The previous method when doing medical billing for inpatient follow up consultation codes was to use 99261-99263 (Follow-up inpatient consultation for an established patient). Unfortunately, physicians and medical billing staff members found it difficult to decide if the care was initial or a follow-up. Those CPT codes were constantly claimed incorrectly. In an effort to increase coding efficiency …
Decertification Could Cost You Big in Medical Billing
Keep accurate medical billing and policy practices to ensure your facility’s success. Certification is a necessity tool if you run a Hospice. If you happened to lose that certification for any reason, you would lose out on a lot of revenue. Just ask VistaCare how much they have lost in medical billing since being decertified in October. VistaCare Inc. is a Hospice care facility that was decertified in the two cities of Indianapolis and Terre Haute in October. Since then, they have attempted to assist over 100 patients without pay. Medical billing has been put on hold while they figure out a solution. The solution to the VistaCare Inc. problem …
