Initial Hiccups in a New Practice!!

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Initial Hiccups in a New Practice!!
As a physician, most days have their ups and
downs. A physicians profession is to help heal
and work with the sick. However, besides working
with patients they also have to deal with a lot
of administrative processes. One of the major
jobs is handling the medical billing and coding
of a patients illness, which helps bring in
reimbursements. However, this is not always
smooth sailing. Let us see how a bad day can make
the physician drop dead if they had the
chance!   In walks, a patient and the front desk
person are on leave. This makes it necessary to
note all the details of the patient and not just
the symptoms of the illness, but insurance
coverage details as well. Are you aware that with
the new health reforms people who dont pay their
premiums lose coverage after 90 days? And the
physician may not get paid? So besides the
medical expertise, physicians need to be aware
about the coverage plans. Moreover, besides the
in-house coders and billers who need to be
updated with the ICD-10 coding system, the
physician, too needs to be aware of the codes as
the descriptive documentation now needs to cover
those extra codes being brought in. If those are
missed out by the coders, you could lose
reimbursements due to claim denials. What happens
if a claim gets denied?
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Initial Hiccups in a New Practice!!

• It is the physician who will need to backtrack,
  look at notes, check and match with the coding
  and billing, see what is missed or overrated, as
  that could go to the fraud department for
  overbilling. And National studies have estimated
  that the cost for waste and inefficiencies in
  healthcare expenditures to be as much as 30.
• Following are a few tips to help deal with such a
  harrowing situation that will help improve
  physician productivity and make your practice
  efficient and thus generate good revenues.
• Take responsibility
• Every staff member has to realize how they
  contribute to the revenue cycle. Any error in
  billing or coding can have a negative impact on
  the revenues.
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• 2. Know your facts and upgrade your knowledge
• Awareness and knowledge of the changing
  healthcare reforms, Insurance coverage plans,
  coding details, etc. need to be updated regularly
  among the staff.

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Initial Hiccups in a New Practice!!
3. Scheduling Inefficiency Inadequate planning,
over-scheduling, and harassed staff can lead to a
loss in productivity. Adequate training of the
front desk and understanding the health cycles
will help create a better process and avoid bad
days. Efficiency and Productivity will earn you
more footfalls, i.e. happy patients. Knowing the
insurance rules regulations, and
well-documented coding of the patients symptoms
will help decrease your claim denials and faster
reimbursements into the kitty.