Helping Medical Practices Make More Money

Many patients would undoubtedly welcome the ability to have multiple conditions, including troublesome allergies diagnosed and treated through the same set of providers, rather than having to travel here and there to one doctor for testing and perhaps another for treatment.

If you’re an Ear, Nose and Throat (ENT) physician, or practice Family Medicine, Internal Medicine or Pediatrics, this might be a good add-on service to offer. For those meeting the criteria and wondering how to begin, here are a few tips as well as some basic coding information to get your practice (and billing department) off to a good start.

With continued changes to codes and rules, professional coders and physicians alike often have a tough time navigating the complexity of nephrology billing and coding. After the significant changes that came with ICD-10, CPT codes and E&M guidelines have continued to change, leaving practices dealing with additional requirements from payers and required specificity. Unfortunately, small mistakes can add up to costly denials, so it’s crucial to learn how to avoid the most common nephrology billing and coding errors and discover some of the best tips for preventing denials. 

Cardiology practices, like other specialty practices, offer a variety of different services, including blood work, invasive procedures, and other interventions to patients in a variety of different settings. The charges for services are dealt with differently depending on where the services were provided – in same day surgery centers, in a hospital setting, or in the doctor’s office. Accurate Cardiology billing and coding require an excellent working knowledge of current coding rules, cardiology specific codes, and compliance standards. Even small mistakes in cardiology billing and coding can result in denials that lower your practice revenue. Get ready to reduce errors and improve practice revenue in 2019 by learning more about the coming changes and discovering some of the best practices and tips for cardiology billing and coding.  

Revenue Cycle Management (RCM) is an essential, and growing, segment of the healthcare field, offering a standardized format for determining the costs of procedures and treatments. The procedures for billing and coding are necessary, and they’re used to translate patient records into standardized codes that are used for billing third-party payers and patients. Unfortunately, the ongoing challenge is coding accuracy. In the fiscal year of 2017, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) reported that errors resulted in over $36 billion in improper payments. Some companies are beginning to develop and test artificial intelligence applications to help improve the efficiency and accuracy of billing and coding processes.

Even if you’ve educated yourself on the new CPT codes for 2019, it’s just as important to familiarize yourself with codes that have been deleted for the coming year. If your practice accidentally uses deleted CPT codes, you’ll find yourself with a lot of unnecessary denials. To help you keep deleted codes off your claims, here’s a look at some of the significant deletions you need to know about in 2019.