Does Your Practice Apply Medical Billing Best Practices?

Medical billing is one of the most important aspects of running a successful practice, and if done properly, it can increase revenue and profitability. If done improperly without using best practices, however, it can cause all kinds of financial difficulties for your facility and its staff, and this can lead to lowered standards of patient care and less patient satisfaction.

Tie all of this together and it’s likely that your practice will receive negative brand identity, and this can ultimately destroy your bottom line. Thankfully, employing best practices in billing is easy if you follow a few simple steps:

Do Your Research Prior to Rendering Services
Before you render service to a patient, it’s a good idea to know their eligibility for medical insurancecoverage claims. Failing to secure insurance information prior to rendering services may leave your practice in the lurch if a patient is unable to pay for the services or if the patient’s insurance policy does not cover the services that were rendered. This is also important for patient satisfaction as no patient wants to walk to the check-out desk and then find out that they are on the hook for costs that they thought were covered.

Code Your Billing Documents Correctly
Once your billing staff has determined the financial responsibility of a patient, they will need to properly code billing documents. Proper coding will ensure that a patient is paying for the services that he or she has received, and it will also ensure that your practice is receiving the correct payment for services rendered. Failing to properly code billing documents can confuse patients and frustrate them, and it can also mean lost revenue for your practice.

Double Check Everything
One of the most common causes for a denial or delay in receiving funds from a claim is a typo. A single mistake, such as a misplaced letter, can be just as serious as a complete and total substitution of patient name data when it comes to claims rejections. As such, double check all documents prior to sending them off.

If you are writing down information by hand, make sure that your handwriting is legible. It also pays to have another person check information after you have already double checked it in order to improve accuracy and reduce the possibility of error. Remember, rejected or delayed claims not only hurt your practice’s cash flow, but they can also lead to irate customers.

Use Medical Claims Software
Finally, you can alleviate a lot of headaches, both for you and your patients, by employing medical practice software that includes advanced billing options. Such software should be able to handle everything from coding to billing record management, but it should also include options that provide increased efficiency in other areas of your practice, such as revenue cycle management.

To find out how your practice can further benefit from medical office software, both in terms of billing and otherwise, contact PracticeSuite at www.practicesuite.com.