Medical billing practice takes into account all the activities that doctors and all healthcare practices must undertake to get paid by either insurance companies or patients.
Medical Billing Responsibilities involves the preparation of medical claims that are usually sent to insurances and medical benefits payers such as Medicare and Medicaid.
Today Medical Billing is a growing field in US, UK, Germany, Australia as well as in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and many other countries that are reaping the benefits of Medical Billing services outsourcing. These Billing Service provider range from larger multinational firms like
Athena and
MTBC to in-house billing and individuals that are
Earning Money with Medical Billing at Home.
Medical Billing Best Practices and Improvement Tips
The following are some of the best practices that any health care provider should engage in, to be guaranteed of good returns in the entire medical billing process:
Deal with Appointments Only
Creating a consistent scheduling plan is essential to be assured of optimized results on the billing process. An appointment –only schedule process results in reductions of errors in the capturing of the billing information their by accelerating the insurance verification process. It may seem quite hard to stick only to appointments but vital in cleaning up and optimizing the billing process.
Verify Patients Information
Your receptionists should always be up to task in recording all the patients’ vital information essential for the entire medical coding and billing process. This entails verifying a new patient demographic forms and ensuring they are complete. Checking for completeness will prevent the scenario of having to call the patient again. Notifying new patients about the practice payment policy prior to an appointment is also a good practice that any health care facility should consider. This will allow for the sharing of the necessary information and documents essential for the billing process. On every encounter with any patient a receptionist should always ask a patient the questions like Are you still living at...? Can I see your insurance card
Verify Patients Insurance
Patient’s insurance verification should always be done prior to any treatment being offered; it has been found to have a major impact on improving charge to collection ratios. You can take your time to verify a patient’s insurance information prior to their scheduled appointments to make it easy for you to carry out the billing process after their appointment. Some patients also have the tendency of being reluctant in giving out their social security numbers. It will be your responsibility in this case of assuring them of the security of their vital information in the social security number.
Measure Performance Consistently and Continuously
A properly managed system is one that gets managed easily from time to time. It is always good to measure the performance of your employees in terms of their ability to collect the relevant billing information from patients. This will give you a clear idea about their reliability and performance.
Claim Submission at Time
Carrying out the billing process as soon as a patient encounter is recorded in the doctor’s office is the only way to be guaranteed of timely pay on the billing process, the chances of collecting always decrease by 40% after the 72 hours.
Use Medical Billing Software
Medical billing softwares are the real deal nowadays in terms of medical billing and coding. Modern medical billing and coding software’s are automated with highly automated functions and decisions. Modern medical billing and coding software guarantee automated eligibility checking, claim edits and charge entry.
You can benefit from some
Free Billing Softwares for Small Medical Practices or purchase a license/subscription of paid state of the art Medical Billing softwares available in the market. To learn further about these Medical Billing Softwares with free trails you can have a look at some of the
Best Billing Software available in the Healthcare IT industry or you can also reviews other affordable
Online Billing Softwares, if you are looking for a web-based Medical Billing and Coding solution. You can also checkout our
Psychology Billing Softwares in case you are looking for a Medical Billing Program exclusively developed for Mental Health Practices.
Review Rejection Claims
Reviewing electronic claim rejection reports daily is one of the best practices that any health facilities can engage in, to be guarantee of good returns in the future. Reviewing reports will facilitate the detection of where the errors may have originated, that may have led to the rejection of a claim by an insurance company.
In addition to these tips, you can learn how to
Increase Medical Billing Volume or look for relevant
Medical Billing Course and
Online Medical Billing Certification Programs that provide valuable professional training at highly affordable rates.