Billing has always been a challenge for medical professionals, and now with new regulations including the Affordable Care Act (ACA), it’s become even more important to get it right.
Billing errors can cost practices thousands of dollars every day, but finding the time to address them may be more than an overworked staff can take on, according to Kathy McCoy, MBA.
Medicalbillersandcoders.com (MBC) feels it has stepped into the breach to address this problem. Its guide to “Best Billing Practices” allows physicians across all 50 states a way to implement a billing strategy that works for them in this changing healthcare landscape, according to a press release.
MBC says its guide helps physicians decide which areas of their billing practices fall down the most, and then provides solutions for these areas.
The press release reports that, according to the American Medical Association, some of the difficulty in controlling billing comes from the fact that there are many practices in medical billing that don’t follow traditional standards.
Billing problems physicians’ offices encounter include who’s in charge of billing, how to add new patients and new administrative tasks, the existence of in-house specialists who can stay on top of the billing process, who’s in charge of accounts receivables, how to negotiate with payers and keeping up with new healthcare regulations and coding.
MBC said its guide provides answers to these questions.
The press release notes many billing offices think they have enough time to deal with the coding issues brought about by the ACA, but “think again." Physicians have until 2014 to comply with all the requirements of the ACA before financial penalties, but many are due before that.
MBC's best billing practice guide offers step-by-step instructions to solving clinics’ day-to-day problems in light of the ACA, where doctors’ medical billing seems to change every day as payers make new regulations or change their claims negotiation procedures, according to the source.
MBC says its best billing practice guide tries to help physicians reach a permanent and effective management solution to their billing and administrative problems. Physicians simply have to answer questions about the 12 issues the guide raises as related to their practices, allowing them to focus on areas where more attention needs to be paid.
Edited by
Braden Becker
