3 Essential Steps for Medical Billing
Medical billing is most people’s least favorite part of working in healthcare administration. Typically, there is a team of individuals who can handle this task in larger businesses. However, if you work in a small practice, you may find yourself needing to at least learn the basic ins and outs of medical billing so that you can assist with the process if need be. Here are 3 essential steps for proper medical billing.
1 – Checking A Patient’s Insurance Coverage
Checking insurance is one of the first steps when dealing with the medical billing process for a patient. The question isn’t as simple as if they have insurance or not, and it also isn’t as simple as seeing if you take their insurance or not. What you need to perform is a verification of benefits. If you’re at all familiar with insurance policies, you know its very possible for your patient’s insurance company to cover one thing and not the other.
In other words, you may have a patient that wishes to receive services or care and some services are covered and others are not. This can really affect the total cost of treatment and will also determine if and how the patient will want treatment administered.
2 – Keep Up to Date on CPT Codes and Changes
As you may know, CPT codes have a tendency to change. If the code changes and you don’t know, you’re potentially in for some trouble since you’re technically using the wrong code from there on out thus causing medical billing errors and issues that prevent the clinic from getting paid.
This is especially true in the mental health billing and coding space where definitions and disorders are rapidly changing as they undergo scientific and medical scrutiny to further reach better means of treatment. A side effect to that is mental health CPT codes can change or be redone altogether due to a trick down effect from changes in the DSM.
3 – Double-Check Your Information
You’ve got all of the information gathered and you need to submit a claim, what do you do next? Before you submit the claim, you should make sure all of your information is accurate, and as error-free as possible. Prudence is the essence of the job for medical coders and billers. A job well done is one in which we do not think about, it’s only the claims with issues or errors do we become aware of once they’re rejected.
Not every insurance company uses the same billing format, if you happen to talk to them during verification of benefits or for some other reason, you should ask them what their preferred billing format is. Eventually, you’ll gain experience as a medical biller and you won’t have to ask, you’ll simply just know!
Professional Remote Medical Billing Company
At Mental Health Billing Utah , we just know too. With years of medical billing and medical coding experience, you can leave all of the small details to our professional team for all of your medical billing and clerical needs.
Contact The Mental Health Billing Utah today so you can reduce the administrative bloat in your office and focus on what’s most important for your business!
