Medical Billing Services

Medical billing services are essential to the financial health of any health care practice or organization. There's been a steady rise in health care expenses but no matching increase in Medicare or Medicaid rates. Additionally, stiff pre-authorization requirements of third party payers and the difficulty of collecting from self-pay clients make the arena of medical billing services not only a revenue enhancement but also a stop gap on losses.

Services provided for Medical Billing

Medical billing services offer a wide range of services from filing claims to helping with collections. Here's a quick overview of medical billing services available depending upon your business needs:

• Accurate Coding : More than simply providing a code, a good medical billing service should be able to provide the best code to ensure the best authorized treatments for patients and highest level of reimbursement to the provider. This includes checking for code modifiers or changed or revised codes.

• Patient Accounts : Creation of confidential patient records to include up-to-date billing information and insurance data as well as information on employers.

• Electronic Claims Processing: While it's perfectly acceptable to submit a paper claim, an electronic claim will receive a faster turnaround in payment back to you. Electronic claims are typically paid in less than 2 weeks whereas paper claims can be held up for as long as 4 – 6 weeks.

• Administrative Support: With strong services for medical billing, your patients can call the medical billing staff directly. This results in greater client satisfaction as well as frees the phones and your time for meeting current patient needs.

• Reimbursement Tracking: Do you have denied claims or have lost track of a patient? A good medical billing service will re-file as needed, track down lost claims and make needed corrections on denials.

• Management Tools: Besides tracking income, medical billing services can monitor the accounts payable, assist in scheduling to maximize use of staff, create reports to identify overhead costs, and track areas of both income and expenses.

At this point, you might be thinking all of these services must come at a high price. While it's true that you'll spend some money to improve your medical billing systems, you'll also be generating more revenue and losing less money once your billing is done more efficiently and effectively. Many billing services charge on a percentage of the claim but it's always worth making a few calls to see what firms can offer for a competitive price.

Just remember: Your patients count on your financial health so staying in business is part of good patient care!

Medical Coding Nexus, conceptualized in Feb, 2005, is an online portal which provides up-to-date, pertinent information about medical coding and billing. Copyright @2005 Honlyn Limited All Rights Reserved

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