The votes are in, and thanks to all of you who voted on our blog and Facebook. The winner of our Medical Billing Tip of the Month contest this month is…
Review Your Fee Schedule Yearly
Are you leaving money on the table that could be in your pocket?
Do you review your fee schedule yearly? If not, chances are you are not collecting as much reimbursement as you could be. Under-priced fees can cost a practice thousands of dollars every year.
Here are a couple ways to add those extra $$ to your pocket. Compare your fees to Medicare and Contracted Commercial Payers fee schedules. You can purchase a fee analyzer, which can be expensive, or if you are the do-it-yourself type person like me, you can download the payers fee schedules and copy and paste them into an Excel spreadsheet to compare your fees to specific payers. You can even use Excel and create a column to calculate your new fees, setting them above the payer contracted rates.
Tammy Chidester, CPC, CPMA, CEMC, PCS
MERA Consulting
(304) 416-9276
Thank you to all who entered; please be sure to submit your Medical Billing Tip of the Month to Marketing@Kareo.com by Friday, February 17, for inclusion in the next round of judging. We’ll post the top three tips on our Facebook page for your vote! You will win a $250 American Express gift card if your tip is chosen. Good luck!
Helen Parise said:
Are the Physicians & Medical Assistants charging all the lab tests ?
Is you physician paying for your patients labs ?
Do you review monthly your Quest / Labcorp or XYZ lab invoice ? If not, chances are you you will find revenue if you start reviewing.
Several key errors I find are:
1) Wrong lab was used for the patients insurance contract preference
you can not bill patient for your mistake
2) Patients Insurance information was not sent with specimen so lab bills provider.
3) Medicare / Medicaid was inappropriately billed to provider, when lab should have billed insurance directly
4) “add on lab tests” never conveyed to biller to add onto patient bill
Here is the process we perform in our office:
1) have the current monthly lab invoice in front of auditor of charges
2) review the patients account first by looking at what insurance does the patient have ? If Medicare / Medicaid the lab should be processing that bill and office should only bill for the draw fee
Now you should also review other insurance that have special contacts with lab companies, only those labs can be billed and paid to those lab companies, office will get a rejection if the appropriate lab was not used !!! And you can not turn around and bill the patient for their labs when your office made the mistake of sending the specimen to the incorrect contracted lab.
3) Contact the lab quickly and hoepfully the lab will be willing to reverse changes off your invoice and rebill to the patients appropriate insurance company.
4) For all the lab fees that are corretly on your invoice, per patient insurance: now review your billing account, was each test billed appropriately from your office ? was there “add on tests” that were never billed ?
I guarantee if you review those lab invoices you will find revenue.
Good Luck, keep a tracking log to educate staff & physicians to limit errors in the coming months
Helen Parise CPC
Office Admnistrator
EDM Consultant Services
(708) 681-3200 x 5249
Tuesday, February 7, 2012 - 9:24 am
John Mazza said:
Someone taught you well!!
Tuesday, February 7, 2012 - 11:13 am
Lucy Lozano said:
Make double sure that the correct insurance information is on the bill especially for workers compensation claims, claim number, date of injury and all the medical records are attached for that date of service being billed when submitting the bill for proper billing for claims to be paid on time.
Thursday, February 9, 2012 - 8:27 am
Kathy McCoy, MBA said:
Lucy, thanks for your additions. We appreciate your thoughts!
Monday, February 13, 2012 - 2:46 pm