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Medical Practice Disaster Plan
Over the last couple of years there has been so many natural disaster that most people were not prepared for. There are also man-made disasters that happen as well, such as a possible gas leak, electricity pole down and fires. Having a disaster plan doesn’t have to cost a lot of money but without one it could be severely costly to a medical practice.
One area of concern could be if you were to lose power or phone service was lost. It’s also a good idea to have a staff phone book where you have each and every staff member list their emergency contacts such as name and phone numbers of several people in case of an emergency. If employees have health issues they could also list those issues and also medication that they take. Also the make and model of their car is also a helpful piece of information.
Keeping track of what patients have checked in the office and what patients have checked out is also a good way in an emergency to be able to determine who is in the building. Having a supply of emergency supplies should be in a couple of areas of the office in case one area cannot be reached. An emergency supply kit should not only contain first aid supplies but also a supply of food and water. These items should be checked regularly to make sure it has not spoiled and items should be clearly marked with an expiration date for easy replacement. Waiting for a disaster to strike and then try and figure out what is needed is way too late.
If the power is out it would be good to have plenty of batteries and flashlights. In an emergency you really don’t know how long before help arrives. Having blankets and pillows should also be included in the emergency kit. Staff and physicians should have a disaster plan set in place. It even would be a good idea to have a practice run of what to do during an emergency.
There are many discount stores and warehouse stores that offer emergency kits that include many items mentioned above. Army surplus stores are also a good place to purchase supplies. All staff members along with the physician should be aware of where all the supplies are and what actions should be taken when or if an emergency happens. At least once or twice a year these procedures should be examined. New employees should also be trained and made aware of the disaster plan.
Things happen at a split second and it’s such an advantage to physicians, staff member and patients to have a well prepared office in case of an emergency.
Marina Hall is a Certified Medical Reimbursement Specialist (CMRS) and founder of MariAnn Medical Billing Service. To read a full “Interview with Marina Hall” visit her website at http://www.inscoding.com/aboutus.php
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Ways To Avoid Billing Problems Before Th
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Ways To Avoid Billing Problems Before They Happen
One of the most frustrating things that can happen when billing is when a claim is denied and your claim was a “clean claim”. Here are some ways for physician offices to strategize ways to minimize and hopefully avoid a denial or waiting a long period of time for payment.
The very best time to resolve a potential problem with third-party payers is before a problem happens. One way is to build relationships with various provider representatives. A cooperative and professional understanding can be established through ongoing communication.
By identifying carriers that can at times be a problem is helpful when determining who to target when trying to build a relationship with. Make a spreadsheet which pinpoints who these payers are and if there record shows that they consistently fail to pay within 90 days of submitting the claim. Show in different columns how many times claims have to be resubmitted, what proportion of claims are rejected, the dollar amount of the claims submitted compared to the amount received and the time between the claim being submitted and when the payment was received.
These facts are good statistics to provide a pattern to the payer and hopefully persuade them to improve the promptness of their reimbursement patterns. For the most part, insurance payers require that a physician’s claim be submitted within 90 days. Is this being done?
To analyze this date properly, the medical biller should review past payments and EOB’s in order to identify these problems before submitting more claims. The insurance payer also has a responsibility within their contract that denotes a deadline for which they must send reimbursements. When submitting a clean claim to insurance payers; you have the right to expect payment within 90 days of submission.
Another way to examine rejections from payers is classifying them by CPT or ICD codes which can also be a way to see if for whatever reasons these certain codes are being rejected.
Now that you have all this data, put into action a plan. Use this data to help you to submit clean bills and cut back on money lost due to rejections from insurance payers and having to resubmit claims. At the same time, set up a system to track the steps that were taken to solve these billing issues.
From time to time it’s good to set up a conference call between the physician or the insurance biller or both to bring these issues up to them. All this documentation and data that has been gathered is very helpful when speaking with payers so that your point is proven with facts. You may at times have to document patterns of payment but with polite negotiations with the payer representatives you’re able to resolve issues promptly which leads to an improvement in cash flow for the office and a satisfying work
environment for all.
Marina Hall is a Certified Medical Reimbursement Specialist (CMRS) and founder of MariAnn Medical Billing Service. To read a full “Interview with Marina Hall” visit her website at http://www.inscoding.com/aboutus.php
Click here to read testimonies regarding MariAnn Medical Billing Service http://www.inscoding.com/testimonials.php
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Medical Billing is such a fun and reward
Medical Billing is such a fun and rewarding field! #InsCoding.com
Billing and Collections During Hard Economic Times Part II
As we discussed in the preceding article the fact that it’s getting harder and harder to collect patient balances. This can definitely be frustrating, time consuming and often unsuccessful. The Commercial Collection Agency Association showed that after 3 months of an outstanding bill, the probability of collecting is 73%, after 6 months 57% and 29% after a year. When the amount of the bill is minimal the figures are even less.
Staff should be well trained as to how to collect payment from patients. When visiting a retail store and you decide on what you’re going to purchase, do you walk past the registers and say “bill me”, that would and could never happen. So why do physicians allow this to happen in their offices?
One way to tactfully implement payment is due upon service, is setting up signs in the office where they can clearly be seen. Staff members should also be trained as to how to ask for payment. Such as “how would you like to pay?” Then the staff member should start to write out a receipt to show the patient that payment is due. Reminding patients when confirming appointments is another opportunity to inform them of the policy.
Consider accepting credit cards and debit cards. This is a good way to collect payment due to the fact you have the assurance in a matter of seconds if the payment went through. One suggestion is due to some patient’s having high deductibles and it’s difficult to figure out what the exact bill will be, have the front desk take an imprint of the credit card and bill half the amount and then let them know that they will be billed the remainder and will receive a statement when they learn of the final amount from the insurer.
Sometimes it becomes necessary to use a collection agency. It’s best to come up with a plan in this case. How many statements should go out before action must be taken? Some physicians send up to 6 statements. It should suffice to send 3 statements over a 3 month period. One method used by a physician’s office was to send the 3rd statement as a certified letter; this ensures that it has reached the appropriate address with a person’s signature showing that the statement was received. A phone call after the 2nd statement would do well also. After the 3rd statement is sent, give the patient 15 days to respond with an actual date printed on the statement of the day it will be sent to collections.
Collection agencies generally charge a percentage of the monies collected. Most companies fees range from 12% to 50%. It would do well for you and the patient to not have it get to that point but if necessary there are many good collections agencies to choose from.
Marina Hall is a Certified Medical Reimbursement Specialist (CMRS) and founder of MariAnn Medical Billing Service. To read a full “Interview with Marina Hall” visit her website at http://www.inscoding.com/aboutus.php
Click here to read testimonies regarding MariAnn Medical Billing Service http://www.inscoding.com/testimonials.php
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Billing and Collections During Hard Economic Times Part I
Insurance companies are more and more shrinking reimbursement to physicians. Unfortunately this is out of the physicians control but there’s hope. Physicians and medical insurance billers need to be more aggressive and in turn they will be more successful in collecting payment from insurance companies and patients that is owed to them. There are two aspects of revenue being decreased. First, claims are being denied by insurers and some claims are not resubmitted after a denial, or if they are resubmitted, they are past the allowable date. Generally, about 7% to 15% of claims are denied by insurers.
Second, because of these hard economic times, patients are simply not paying their bills. A study showed that 40% to 50% of patient balances are not being paid. This is sometimes due to high deductible health plans and the rise in people losing their jobs.
Most physicians have mastered their specialty but didn’t realize that they would have to become business owners and also would need to learn the billing part of their business.
Physicians should compile a spreadsheet that shows each month’s accounts receivable compared to the prior months. It should also list the date of submission of all claims and the number of denials each month. The number of denied claims resubmitted and the time that it took to resubmit the denied claims.
Offices that employ an onsite biller can delegate this responsibility to this person; or even better using an outside billing service they should be able to provide this type of report for you.
Start with denied claims
Some of the most common reasons a claim is denied is problems with eligibility and benefits verification. This should be verified EVERY time a patient comes in the office, even if it was the day before. Anything can change and it could mean losing out on revenue. Some other reasons are miscoding, duplicate submissions, transposed or missing numbers and billing the secondary insurance plan instead of the primary plan.
Improve the way patients are checked in during the registration process. It may take a little more time but the form that patients fill out when they are new or returning should be thoroughly gone over with the patient to verify everything is correct. On the patient registration form at the top should be an expiration date of the form that should be re-filled out after at least a year. Changes happen in people’s lives everyday; divorce, new insurance, new job, change of address, change of phone number and all these things can affect your claim and could lead to a denial.
In the following article we will continue to discuss ways to collect and how to avoid denials from insurance companies. Collecting from patients will be the next subject we discuss in detail.
Marina Hall is a Certified Medical Reimbursement Specialist (CMRS) and founder of MariAnn Medical Billing Service. To read a full “Interview with Marina Hall” visit her website at http://www.inscoding.com/aboutus.php
Click here to read testimonies regarding MariAnn Medical Billing Service http://www.inscoding.com/testimonials.php
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Medical Practice Management Tips Part II
In part one of this article we discussed ways to avoid gaps in the schedule due to no shows, offering patients more services and creating a niche to get new patients. We’ll now be discussing two more areas that will help to increase revenue and lower costs.
1. Multiple physician practices where some are pulling their weight and others are not and how to deal with those who aren’t
Many offices have more than one physician on staff, usually there is a senior physician who runs the practice or has been there the longest. In order for the practice to run smoothly all partners should have a part in working towards the common good of the practice. The senior doctor shouldn’t carry more weight than the other partners. When a physician is underperforming, a discussion should happen to determine what they need to improve on and this should not be a singled out plan but should be done as a united group.
Their should be a spokesperson to address these issues with the other physicians backing up the claims as a whole. This will come across better to the physician and he or she will not feel like it is one person’s opinion. Stress to the physician that it’s only in their best interest as well as the practice that these issues be addressed.
2. If a patient’s check bounces, how to still receive payment
The physicians practice should not only have a financial policy already implemented but it should also include in that policy on bounced checks and what the steps the office will take to receive that payment. Most banks charge for a returned check, this fee should be charged to the patient. Some states allow you to charge a processing fee above the bank charges, these both should be stipulated in the financial policy that the patients signs. The “National Check Fraud Center” lists the bad-check laws for each state. This also should be in the financial policy which explains and proves that you are legally allowed to collect these fees.
In order for physicians to have an increased flow of revenue they should make available every method possible for payment such as cash, checks, credit cards, debit cards or ability to pay their bill online with a service such as PayPal. When accepting checks, there is technology such as a check scanning system from a company that can guarantee that a patient’s check will clear. The money is directly deposited into the practice’s bank account and there is no need to make a trip to the bank to make the deposit. Most of these services do have some fees involved but if you consider the time and effort to collect the money otherwise is well worth it.
Marina Hall is a Certified Medical Reimbursement Specialist (CMRS) and founder of MariAnn Medical Billing Service. To read a full “Interview with Marina Hall” visit her website at http://www.inscoding.com/aboutus.php
Click here to read testimonies regarding MariAnn Medical Billing Service http://www.inscoding.com/testimonials.php
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Medical Practice Management Tips Part I
Many medical practices have been suffering due to the high cost of malpractice insurance, rising supply cost, increasing changes with reimbursement rates and overhead costs, so physicians are constantly looking for ways to increase their revenue and lower their costs. There are many tactics and tips that could help physicians to find other ways to increase their revenue to balance out other costs.
1. What to do when patients do not show up for their appointments
One way to handle this is to have a no show policy that charges the patient. This charge could be put in effect if the patient no shows for the first or second time. It is at times somewhat difficult to collect, but if most patients want to continue to visit the physicians office in the future they will understand the policy and pay the charge. One step further would be to have a credit card on file for this purpose, with the understanding that if the appointment is missed without notice, the patient’s credit card will be charged. This should be relayed to the patient when making an appointment and it also should be posted somewhere near the check in area. Also confirm appointments 36 hours prior to the visit so that if they cancel there will be time to fill in that appointment with someone else. Start a cancellation list which you could refer to when an appointment slot has been made available.
2. Offer your patients more services
Patients are busy people too and how convenient would it be for them to be able to get additional services at the physician’s office rather than have to travel to another location either that day or later to receive the necessary testing to further evaluate them. Some services that could be done in-house: draw blood, conduct urinalyses and stool guaiac tests for example. You should be able to bill for these items. Also if the patient must go to another facility to receive additional services, help them to arrange the details, such as schedule the appointment for them. Patients really appreciate that extra mile in their care and that results in them being loyal to the physician as a patient.
3. Providing a niche could create more new patients
There are so many physicians to choose from for a patient to seek care from. Physicians should consider doing wellness medicine. This could open up the range of patients that the physician normally sees. Why not try developing a subspecialty such as diabetes, geriatrics, dermatology or thyroid disorders. Or occupational health by doing pre-employment physicals, worker’s compensation, drug screening, drivers’ physicals and advertise that you offer these services whether it be in the yellow pages, online, or the practices own website.
Marina Hall is a Certified Medical Reimbursement Specialist (CMRS) and founder of MariAnn Medical Billing Service. To read a full “Interview with Marina Hall” visit her website at http://www.inscoding.com/aboutus.php
Click here to read testimonies regarding MariAnn Medical Billing Service http://www.inscoding.com/testimonials.php
