When you have a procedure that can cover two close but distinctly different areas such as a facial and a dental nerve block, you need to make sure that your claim encompasses exactly the procedure that was done or you may wind up with a denial of your claim.
A common situation would be if the ED physician performed a diagnostic nerve block on a patient complaining of pain in the floor of her mouth and her bottom set of teeth. You would want to be certain that you chose 64402 (Injection, anesthetic agent; facial nerve) for facial nerve blocks, not blocks in the mouth or jaw. The determining factor is that the surgeon treated a branch of the trigeminal nerve, not the facial nerve. (more…)
January 2009 brought more changes to the medical billing industry. Certain codes were “retired”, new codes were added and others simply had their meanings broadened to encompass their meanings. If your practice doesn’t keep up with the changes and know in advance of coming changes, you can be losing out on legitimate revenue for services rendered. Some practices are losing up to one fourth of their revenue simply because they staff isn’t aware of the best techniques for reporting procedures. (more…)
Feeling stretched too thinly? If so you will find our medical billing services can help you tremendously and it doesn’t matter if you’re located within Indiana or outside the state, we can handle medical billing claims nationwide. (more…)
It’s hard to let go of what you might deem the financial control of your practice. Hiring a medical billing consultant can seem like you’re adding expenses instead of cutting them down, especially if you have never outsourced your billing. If you’ve always discounted outsourcing your medical billing claims because you feel as though you would be relinquishing control over your billing, read on – you’ll find that is not the case. (more…)
For correct payment amount, accurate place of service codes are required. The failure to provide the correct place of service code with the correct current procedural terminology code for E/M services will cause your claim to get denied. One of the most important elements of medical billing is the place of service code. (more…)
More Q Modifiers were updated recently, make sure that your staff is up to date on the currently preferred to be reported when the physician is performing foot care. Modifiers Q7 (One class A finding), Q8 (Two class B findings) or Q9 (One class B and two class C findings) tell insurers why your physician is performing foot care. (more…)
Did you know your medical billing partner can be counted among your most valuable business assets? Customer service and health care are also very important aspects of your practice, however, medical billing is the core of the business. You should know at all times that people responsible for the core of your business can be trusted. Knowing your medical billing staff members is imperative to your success.
Medical coding and billing is an extremely skilled practice. When you outsource your medical billing claims, you have to have confidence that your medical billing partner will check the coding, put the medical documentation in order, make notations where needed and submit your medical billing claim through secure measures. (more…)
If you are finding that you’re chasing medical billing claims and having a lot of rejections, it may not be your staff, it might be that they are unable to keep up with the fast pace of the ever-changing medical billing industry. It might be time to consider outsourcing your medical billing claims. And you can get a lot more than just have your medical billing claims handled. (more…)
There is nothing worse than finding different coding mistakes. One of the things that you can do in order to keep certain mistakes from showing up is keep your observation coding in check. Although you may think that you know all of the general rules in terms of observation services reporting in the ED, mistakes can still happen. When you are looking to smooth out any of the wrinkles found in your observation coding, you can keep several things in mind.
For starters, it is very important that you do not bill more than once for physicians that are from the same group. This is a situation that calls for a choice of only one. For example, even though you may have two individual physicians, if they are from the same group they cannot both be billed, even if the patient receive observation care from the both of them. (more…)
Any time you are coding for problem visits that a patient has, it is important that you take into consideration any other office visits that they may have recently had. Basically, you are going to want to look to see if there is a connection between visits for preventative medicine as well as current health issues that may be in place, which also needs some attention.
Many times, a physician will end up seeing a patient that shows up in search of a visit to fall into the category of preventative medicine. Then, upon further evaluation, the doctor will then need to look at the patient further for some sort of significant problem that they have. As a coder, you may end up finding yourself in a situation where you are not sure if you are to code the visit under a new or established patient. (more…)
