PQRS Gets More Complicated as 48 Measures are Retired
Many of us have been struggling to understand the PQRS system and meet the requirements to avoid penalties imposed by Medicare. To make it just a little more complicated as of January 1, 2015 forty-eight of the 300 + measures were retired.
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ICD-10 Codes - Broken Down and Simplified for Mental Health Providers
Many mental health providers love their work and prefer to spend their time counseling their patients and avoiding the administrative issues of running a business. They often work individually with no need for office help.
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Does a Medical Biller Need to Know Medical Coding?
Medical Billing and Coding are often grouped together, especially in courses offered both online and in colleges and universities. Anyone who wants to learn how to do medical billing often takes a course on Medical Billing and Coding only to find ou...
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Medical Billing Service - Percentage Billing - Dying Like the Dinosaurs
Many people in the medical profession do not realize that percentage billing, or charging a percentage of what the provider brings in, is considered fee splitting in several states. Fee splitting is an arrangement between a medical professional and ...
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7 Common Insurance Denials and How to Handle Them
There are a variety of denials that are common to medical insurance claims. Developing a system for handling each of the common denials will help organize work and keep cash flow steady. Denied insurance claims hold up payment and are often never d...
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Insurance Carriers Get Tough with Timely Filing Denials
Most insurance carriers have rules regarding the time frame of the filing of insurance claims. Some, such as Medicare, allow up to 365 days from the date of service for the claim to be filed and others only allow as little as 30 days from the date o...
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2013 Coding Changes for Mental Health
In the world of medical billing, changes are always occurring. Changes in billing procedures, changes in diagnosis codes, changes in procedure codes, and more are common. Sometimes the changes are minor and other changes can be huge. Some affect just...
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7 Tips to Get Patients to Pay Their Bill
Patient billing can be a nightmare for some providers' offices or medical billing services. It's a pain in the butt to get the statements all prepared, stuff the envelopes, put on the postage, etc. only to find that many patients just ignore them. Bu...
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Modern Marketing Methods for Medical Billing Services
Many medical billing services, especially start-ups, have questions about the most effective ways to market themselves. In this economy it is especially important to find marketing techniques that produce favorable results. Nobody wants to waste a l...
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How EMR affects the Billing
By: Alice Scott and Michele Redmond There have been a lot of questions buzzing around about EMR (electronic medical records) and EHR (electronic health records) and how the mandate will affect the medical billing of a practice. Providers have been...
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Marketing Your Medical Billing Service
The hardest part of starting a medical billing service! Many of us come into the field of medical billing loving the challenges and the ever changing work. But the lure of being the boss rather than the one doing all the work starts the brave seeker ...
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Mental Health Parity
In the past, many insurance carriers used to discriminate against mental health services by having different benefits for mental health than for medical services. For example, a patient could have a plan that paid 80% of covered charges for any medi...
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Compliance Plans
Most billing services know and understand the importance of having a well written contract but not all realize that they also should have a compliance plan in place. A compliance plan is for the protection of both the billing service and the provider...
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Clearing House - Save Time, Money and Improve Cash Flow
Most people doing medical billing today are submitting at least some of their claims electronically if not most. Of course there are still a few smaller insurance carriers that do not accept electronic submissions yet, but they are becoming obsolete...
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