ABSTRACT
For many practices, billing is a back-office task to be completed when the patient leaves the office. Historically, medical offices have placed their least experienced personnel at the front desk while the experienced staff remain hidden behind the scenes handling claims. Today's emphasis on customer service, however, has pushed the pendulum so that seasoned personnel are among the first with whom patients interact. Billing is a process that begins at the front desk when the appointment is made. Understanding the billing pipeline and how every action in a practice can contribute to the successful submission of "clean" claims and improved cash flow can encourage the physician and staff to think "billing" during each step of a patient's visit. This article will take you through the steps involved in the billing pipeline from patient registration to final payment or collection agency referral. For each step, we will point out how the actions of the staff affect billing and what can be done to assure accurate, clean claims are submitted promptly.
Subject(s)
Insurance Claim Reporting , Patient Credit and Collection/methods , Practice Management, Medical/economics , Deductibles and Coinsurance , United StatesABSTRACT
Compliance with HCFA's Evaluation and Management (E/M) documentation guidelines presents a tremendous challenge to physicians and their staffs due to the complexity of the guidelines. All too frequently, physicians and staff undercode the services actually provided to prevent additional scrutiny and fraud and abuse charges. This results in significant lost revenue for the practice. This article provides guidance on how to ensure accurate reimbursement while complying with E/M guidelines. Special direction is provided on when and how to bill for a consultation.
Subject(s)
Forms and Records Control , Insurance Claim Reporting/standards , Practice Management, Medical/organization & administration , Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, U.S. , Documentation , Humans , Insurance, Health, Reimbursement , Practice Management, Medical/economics , Risk Management , United StatesABSTRACT
A 10-year study was conducted in which 282 adults in age decades of 20 through 80 were tested in a comprehensive battery of tasks requiring the perception of speech under a variety of conditions in which the speech signal was degraded. The original results were plotted to reveal the differences in performance of the population samples of each decade. In follow-up studies, after 3 years and again after 7 years, samples of the original subject population were retested. The results of the first, stratified sampling and of the longitudinal studies are compared. The two most apparent trends are: (1) the perception of degraded (distorted and competed) speech undergoes a noticeable decline beginning with the 5th decade of life, and (2) the decline is sharply steeper in the 7th decade.
