Physician's Practice - November 2008 - (Page 36)

BILLING BILLING PROBLEMS? CONSIDER YOUR CHARGE TICKET WHAT YOU AREN’T BILLING IS COSTING YOU BIG B Y D E B O R A H G R I D E R, C P C - E / M Are you charging for every service you perform? If your practice is like most, the answer is probably no. Unlike every other industry — in which businesses do not make a habit of giving away their products — medical practices routinely provide services for free. Do you realize that approximately one-fourth of all medical practice income is lost due to underpricing, undercoding, missed charges, or unreimbursed claims? Hundreds of millions of dollars is lost annually • How does the data-entry staff ensure that they receive all charge tickets in the ofﬁce? • Do you use charge tickets? • If you use a coder, how does the coder ensure that all charges are captured correctly? • Does the coder code from a charge ticket/superbill, or from the actual chart note or operative note? Do you realize that approximately one-fourth of all medical practice income is lost due to underpricing, undercoding, missed charges, or unreimbursed claims? DOWN THE DRAIN due to medical billing errors. Physicians and staff are consistently attending seminars just to stay on top of coding and regulatory issues, but are you paying attention to your billing? As much as 3 percent to 5 percent of annual practice revenue is lost because the practice simply did not bill for services and procedures that the physicians performed. To avoid that scenario, start by asking yourself the following questions: • Who is doing the coding? • Are the patient encounters coded off-site or onsite? 36 | PHYSICIANS PRACTICE | NOVEMBER 2008 • If the physician is seeing patients in the hospital, how is this information communicated to the person responsible for entering charges? • Is the person who enters the charges or codes on the claims properly trained to perform the service? As a consultant, I encountered an OB/GYN practice recently in which deliveries were captured in a book in the hospital. It was the responsibility of the coder to check the book daily for deliveries and newborn care. The practice did not use charge tickets to capture hospital care. The frustrated coder was looking in six different places for the information she needed. She was ﬁghting a losing battle. My question to the practice was, “Are you sure you are capturing everything? Do you think you could possibly miss some charges?” Of course, the answer was, “We don’t know.” To avoid missing valuable revenue — whether in the hospital or ofﬁce — the ﬁrst step is to develop a mechanism for communicating the information from the provider to coder or data-entry staff. In a perfect world, every physician would have a certiﬁed coder follow her around WWW.PHYSICIANSPRACTICE.COM http://WWW.PHYSICIANSPRACTICE.COM

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Physician's Practice - November 2008

Physician's Practice - November 2008 Contents Death of Solo Practice Just a Myth Letters HSAy What? Noteworthy Finding Lost Revenue: The Search for Billing and Coding Gold Getting More: Our Annual Physician Compensation Survey ’Tis the Season to be Neutral Ask the Experts Evaluating Paperless Labs HR in a Box? The Guide Coding Third-Party Audits on the Rise Branding the Cash-Only Practice Intra-Office Tug-of-Wars Stickin‘ Up For Yourself Classifieds Advertiser Index

Physician's Practice - November 2008

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