Medical Billing Outsourcing » Medical Billing System

Medical billers worried about ICD-10, HITECH Act

admin — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 13:06:05 +0000

By Anne Zieger

Want to know what’s on medical billers’ minds? Largely, they’re in a stir over the implementation of ICD-10 5010 and compliance with the new HITECH Act, according to speakers at a national conference for the industry.

Panel members speaking at a session of the National Conference of the Healthcare Billing and Management Association note that while CMS has vowed that it won’t relax its ICD-10 deadline, it still may be virtually impossible for the industry to prepare adequately.

In fact, even the commercial payers aren’t going to convert completely by the deadline, noted Holly Louie, compliance officer at Practice Management, Inc. “They plan to use crosswalks, mapping and internal translation tables for an indefinite period of time,” Louie told Healthcare Finance News. That could be a nightmare for billers, however, as it could make claims processing more complicated, she notes.

Meanwhile, billing companies are struggling with meeting the security requirements imposed by the HITECH Act, she said. Smaller companies are having a hard time finding encryption programs to protect their electronic data, and smaller, rural companies may be at a loss as to how they’ll protect their paper documents. What’s more, there’s the issue of training employees adequately to address security issues. All told, dealing with HITECH will be a huge challenge, she suggests.

Above article published on

http://www.fiercehealthcare.com/story/medical-billers-worried-about-icd-10-hightech-act/2009-09-24#ixzz0SZx70qQo

Two studies assess cost of doc-office paperwork

admin — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 10:24:14 +0000

While how much of a medical practice’s administrative overhead can be classified as “waste” is still open to debate, two new studies posted on the Health Affairs Web site attempt to put a price tag on these clerical tasks and on how much a medical practice must spend before it can extract a check from an insurance company.

In one study, researchers calculated that the annual cost of performing billing-related tasks comes to about $85,276 per physician. In the other, it was estimated that the total cost of the nation’s physician-health plan interactions is somewhere between $23 billion and $31 billion.

The authors of the first study concluded that automation could be helpful in reducing claims denials, ensuring coding compliance and reducing days in accounts receivable, and that standardization of benefit plans “appears to offer great potential” to decrease costs. The authors of the second study noted that their high-end estimate of physician-health plan interaction costs, $31 billion, is equal to six times the amount the federal government spends on the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.

The studies were co-sponsored by the Commonwealth Fund and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

Above article published on http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20090515/REG/305159992

Medical Billing

admin — Thu, 07 May 2009 11:06:59 +0000

Medical Billing is a procedure adopted by most clinics and hospitals globally, to sort the problem of late payments due to insurance claims and inter departmental co-ordination issues or delays. It is an extension of the fraternity to adopt corrective measures as far as payments are concerned.

Hospitalization and treatment go beyond a happy patient and a satisfied doctor. The expenses involved are also not confined to the drain in the patient’s purse, but stretches towards the listing and recording to every minute expense detail involved in the treatment of each patient, every day and through the years! Truly a gigantic task! Medical billing is a very important part of any treatment, anywhere in the world. From the time that the patient becomes an in-patient with an entry with the OPD or out-patient department, till the dispatch papers are ready, the procedure involves the perfect co-ordination of various departments and a management team.

Now, many hospitals either outsource this work or exploit the time saving applications of dedicated software to take care of the nitty-gritty involved. These resources help the management to assimilate the necessary account set-up input and keep a record of the panel of physicians involved, the Tax ID’s and passwords. All this is secured onto a network with the help of the state of the art advanced encryption technology. Medical billing involves the arrangement for the conversion of the existing medical data. The data conversion to the billing software is essential for the maintenance of records. The process also involves the access to the data on the physician’s office computer and file-transfer.

The medical billing services enable the physician to access detailed billing information. This is taken care of by the Account Executive, who configures the data on the office computer. The billing information is processed via a file-transfer system, to electronically transfer the super-bills and EOBs. The procedure also involves the preliminary training of office staff to use the system. The process is taken care of by the Account Executive via additional assistance that is further enhanced with technical support available 24/7. The medical billing involves the recording of a variety of financial reports generated by the various departments involved in the treatment.

It is essential that the management co-ordinates roles and functions between the various departments while applying the medical billing process. This results in the access and processing of the accounts and a free-to-concentrate-on-receivables staff. The configured and installed accounts are then processed by the medical billing specialists. The procedure is important to any clinical set up for it to function professionally and cover the basic expenses occurred, per patient. The patient demographics are entered into the billing system and transmitted via electronic medical billing claim or by regular mail claim, to the insurance company. This culminates in the timely coverage of insurance claims and dues in cash from the patients before being officially discharged.

The process also involves the receipt of audit reports and acknowledging the notification of errors or omissions in the claims made. This enables the authorities to track unpaid medical billing claims and resubmit any EOB not received within 30 days of the last billing date. The medical billing also includes a dedicated follow-up with the insurance companies after the base period and claims for denials, follow-up calls with the medical insurance resources and inter-departmental contact in the event of missing information. On the completion of the base period of 180 days, the department prepares the patient aging report to decide on the next course of action.

The medical billing procedure also involves record keeping of all the payments received. The billing service enables the management to access a complete and comprehensive review of the fee schedule and an understanding of the charges versus payments by the different insurance companies. This enables them to come up with a workable strategy. The procedure, if well maintained and applied helps to reduce the accounts hassles for the healthcare providers. The process allows the healthcare professionals to convert today’s excesses and denials into cash. However, appealing for denials is just a small fraction of medical billing. It involves dedicated help to physicians, hospitals and clinics to solve late insurance payments and bills that can go haywire, if not addressed on time.

http://www.buzzle.com/articles/medical-billing.html

Billing Outsource – Where and When

admin — Mon, 04 May 2009 14:44:39 +0000

The health care industry is booming and the competition is increasing everyday. The best possible way for a company to survive in this competitive

economy is to cut costs and the best way to do it is by outsourcing services.

In the health care industry, medical billing is a cumbersome process. To manage an in-house medical billing unit is not only costly but also is time consuming. This is the reason why most health care industries in first world nations have started to outsource their medical billing operations to off-shore destinations like India, China, Mexico and Philippines. Medical billing outsource allows a company in reducing bill processing times and at the same time cut operational costs. Apart from the health care industry most of the utility, insurance, and distribution industries can particularly gain a lot by outsourcing their billing operations to off-shore destinations.

The best destination as of now for billing outsource is India as it offers allied benefits in terms of advanced technology, cheap and talented human resources, stable government, good communications infrastructure and quality certified firms.

Financial services outsourcing

Financial services outsourcing is picking up pace just as any other outsourcing field. Along with US based companies even the UK based companies have started outsourcing financial services. According to many economists the advantages of UK outsourcing are many.

http://www.bizbrim.com/outsourcing/billing-outsource.htm

Outsource Medical Billing Services

admin — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 13:06:26 +0000

The process of collecting fees for medical services is called medical billing. The medical bill which is issued by the physician is said to be a claim. Medical billing may be handled directly by the physician and his or her staff, or it may be administered by a third party. The third party is an independent contractor or company that specializes in handling medical billing. Once the patient service is complete, the respective staff begins preparing the claims and send to the physician or to a third party for billing. After accepting the patient’s signature as assignment of benefits, the claims are sent to process to receive the payment directly from the insurance company. This set of process is called medical billing.

Medical billing provides detailed information of Medical Billing, Medical Billing Software, medical billing services and more. Medical billing is affiliated with medical coding certification. Medical Billing services include the customer/physician in its process. Medical billing services saves time, resources and reduces rejected claims. Medical billing services include patient demographic entry, charge entry, claims submission, payment posting and reconciliation. Key benefits of medical billing are improved cash-flow, faster payments, and higher customer satisfaction. The benefits of medical billing outsourcing include less paperwork and lower employee cost, minimized error and faster revenue receives. For minimized error the perfect audition is done by the supervisor. After the approval of supervisor the claims are sent to the process of revenue. One of the major advantage of medical billing outsourcing is it assists the physicians in saving money through payroll generation, equipment reduction, elimination of postage, and with software service support. Outsourcing to a professional billing company frees you from administration problems. One of the important things has to be noted is while choosing the medical billing outsourcing the costs varies directly with the medical billing.

If the medical billing drops, the cost drops. So the usage of medical billing outsourcing is very consistent to change medical billing expenses from a fixed cost to a variable cost and to improve the ability to manage our business. A medical billing firm gives the detailed information that need to successfully negotiate a contract with a malpractice insurance carrier. The benefits of medical billing outsourcing include less paperwork and lower employee cost, minimized error and faster revenue receives. For minimized error the wonderful audition is done by the supervisor. After the sanction of supervisor the claims are sent to the process of revenue. One of the major advantage of medical billing outsourcing is it assists the physicians in saving money through payroll generation, equipment reduction, elimination of postage, and with software service support.

Outsourcing is made in the concern of minoring firm, conserving energy directed at the competencies of a particular business and resources. Most of the U.S. companies are outsourcing information technology and services to offshore locations to reduce costs and take benefits of global skills. Managers want to know which jobs are more conductive to global disaggregation. Outsourcing engages the relocate of the management and day-to-day execution of a complete business role to an external service provider. Outsourcing services in the companies are customer support and call center functions like market research, web development, engineering, ghostwriting, cad drafting, customer service, telemarketing, and content writing.

Above article published on http://www.articleclick.com/Article/outsource-medical-billing-services/1063269