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8 medical billing tips

Collect More from Patients: 8 Medical Billing Tips

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Unsurprisingly, medical billing is among the most challenging tasks that healthcare organizations come across. Though physicians are well-trained in handling their patients’ health, there are a number of things to consider to keep up with the revenue cycle. 

While medical billing is complicated, here are the eight medical billing tips which can help you to sustain the costly work of offering healthcare services.

Tip #1: Develop a clear collection procedure

This is the first and most significant medical billing tip. 

  • Notify patients about the requirements of debt repayment. Provide information concerning their payment responsibilities in their new-patient papers, and nudge them off their duties frequently, particularly when things alter. 
  • Collect complete details of the patient. Such details comprise their address, contact number, email-id, etc.
  • Help the patients recall their co-pay and its importance. Make sure your team knows how to respond to any inquiries a patient may have.
  • To avert claim rejections, bring the proof of insurance with you to each appointment and double-check the person’s eligibility. Much better, to save money on staffing, employ an electronic verification method.
  • Determine what funding methods are accessible to the patient at the moment. Clarify what comes under their payments. For instance, help them to know if credit cards, cheques, or money are accepted and whether installment plans are possible.

Tip #2: Engage in staff training

After establishing a structured and verifiable billing procedure, you must put effort into proper staff training. It’s never a good idea to skip this medical billing tip or think that only the person who files the claims requires training. In addition, ensure that every team member has exact knowledge of their responsibilities and expectations.

Tip #3: Handle claims correctly

8 medical billing tips

  • Never procrastinate in filing claims. Yet, exercise extreme caution to confirm that the claims are accurate and comprehensive. Make it a practice to file all the claims at the end of the day. 
  • Submission of the claim does not refer to the end of the process. Make very sure that all claims are updated until the patients fully settle them. It’s all too easy to get caught up in the daily grind and overlook minor claims.
  • It’s essential to deliver the claim to the correct payer — the one who is accountable for that specific payment. Claims addressed to the wrong recipient will cause delays. They will reject the claim, and then you have to resend it to the correct recipient. Delayed payments have almost the same impact on the revenue cycle as rejected refunds.

Tip #4: Verify Patient’s Insurance

You can check the patient’s insurance upon every visit. In addition, double checking that it is up to date from when they were last seen would help to avoid any further renewal issues. Also, it is important to check eligibility to be sure the patient’s visit is covered by their insurance. This will not only increase cash collection but will also eliminate any bad debt. 

Tip #5: Stay informed

Medical billing standards are continually updating, and catching up with them can necessitate ongoing staff training and technology updates. Keep up with any changes that may affect medical billing processes, and obtain required training. It’ll save you money in the long run if you don’t have to redo claims as often.

Tip #6: Determine problem accounts

By setting clear protocols for dealing with patient finances, you can have the data for identifying possible problems. Adopt methods for identifying problematic behaviors such as delayed payment, consistently denied payments, or variations in contact details. 

Tip #7: Manage denied and rejected claims on time

Screening a claim for mistakes can help to reduce the number of rejections and cancellations. However, if they do happen, make sure to deal with them as soon as possible. 

Maintain contact with a payer agent. They can assist in resolving issues with the initial claim and supply updates on subsequent claims. This can all assist in speeding up the claim modification cycle and reduce the time it takes to reject and resubmit claims.

Tip #8: Hire a trustworthy billing company

8 medical billing tips

This is the must-follow medical billing tip if you are unable to follow the above ones. If you’re having trouble keeping up with current invoicing laws, getting rejections in payments,  have problems delegating responsibilities, etc., then a medical billing company can help you.

Takeaway

All these tips can help you collect more from your patients and on time. For your best medical billing system and to have some more information, Medical Healthcare Solutions Inc. can help you.

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Physician Credentialing Services

The Advantages of Using Physician Credentialing Services

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When it comes to the medical world, medical credentialing has opened doors that were earlier not so helpful for medical providers. More and more patients opt for insurance and try to benefit themselves with reimbursement from the insurance companies. Thus, the medical practitioners can deliver their services to a number larger than ever.

Let us look at how physician credentialing can benefit the physicians searching for credentialing services and offer them privileges through an insurance company.

Assuring quality

Medical credentialing offers quality assurance in the healthcare industry. It’s a means of review for the medical field. In other words, it makes sure that the medical sector regularly provides quality standards to the patients.

To keep the prices down, insurance companies are attracted only towards well-off medical physicians. Also, they look at those who have shown the ability to showcase their specialties.

Physician Credentialing Services

Keep up patient’s safety

Credentialing helps to keep patients safe as it ensures continuous practices. It makes sure the physician has the skill, capability, and experience needed to perform procedures on their patients. This process helps reduce the chances of medical errors, usually caused due to incompetent providers.

When all this background is available, physician credentialing helps rebuild the lost trust between medical practices and the patients. Patients who are aware of their physicians’ merit and qualifications to be the chosen providers place their faith in their capabilities. 

Save losing revenues

Proper credentialing helps medical practitioners save thousands of dollars in revenue in the form of reimbursement. This is either denied or delayed. If there are errors in the process or receive improper attention to receive proper credentialing, it may lead to insurance companies failing to reimburse the medical bills for the treatment.

In scenarios where medical practice lets a physician give services before or between the credentialing process, the insurance company can advise the patient for the complete reimbursement to cover the expenses of the treatment.

Enhances your patient base

Physician credentialing gives medical practices access to those patient bases that were not earlier available to them. With this, they can accept patients covered under health insurance. Most Americans use health insurance plans.

As per 2019 data, 90.8% of people were covered under health insurance. This helps medical practices to raise their clients and significantly boosts their revenue.

Increase practice reputation

The number of patients researching healthcare practices and the physicians before choosing them has seen unprecedented growth. These include knowing their background or going through a patient’s review online.

One of the best ways to improve your online reputation is to undergo medical credentialing. While potential patients research your medical practice, looking at your credentials conveys that your practice is reputable, merited, and trusted.

Improves the hiring process

Physician Credentialing Services

If a physician is credentialing, they need to go through a full examination process that studies their educational background, residential history, work experience, and any other merit.

If your medical practice wants to hire a medical practitioner, who should be credentialed, this process helps verify whether they are capable enough to perform the given job tasks.

Conclusion

Though it is important to access the new patients, the medical credentialing process can be time-consuming and lengthy. To speed it up, learning how medical credentialing works will help you simplify all credentialing requirements. For more information, you can visit Medical Healthcare Solutions Inc.

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MHS Featured in CIO

Medical Healthcare Solutions Featured in CIO Review Magazine

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We are proud to share that Medical Healthcare Solutions has been selected as one of the 50 Most Promising Healthcare Solution Providers in the CIO Review magazine. The CIO Review is a leading print magazine and online portal that bridges the gap between enterprise IT vendors & buyers. As a knowledge network, CIOReview offers a range of in-depth CIO/CXO articles, white papers, latest Enterprise Technology News to help CIOs & IT leaders make the right decisions.

It is a great honor to be listed among 49 other top healthcare solution providers in this series.

Our very own Stephen Brighton took part in an interview feature for CIO Review and was quoted saying, “MHS’ service-oriented approach and utilization of cutting edge technology allows us to provide healthcare professionals with medical billing, electronic health records, and practice management solutions.”

The article provides an in-depth overview of the services MHS offers such as medical billing, healthcare informatics, and practice management consulting services to name a few. Additionally, the article highlights the effectiveness of third-party billing and how it can ‘take precedence in determining the sustainability of a practice.’  A streamlined medical billing service only scratches the surface of what MHS has to offer and why MHS is listed in CIO Review as one of the 50 most promising healthcare solution providers. Brighton is also quoted in the article saying, “MHS’ services allow enhanced insights into medical practice performance with an outcome that achieves higher profitability and provides more time for staff to focus on patient care and increases referrals, especially in small practices.” Most importantly MHS can help practices, hospitals, and universities ‘experience immediate improvement in day-to-day collections, boosted cash flow, and reduced costs.’

We thank CIO Review for featuring MHS in their TOP 50 Most Promising Medical Healthcare Solution Providers of 2018 series. We invite you to check out the article. Click here to go to the article and turn to page 63.

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student health billing

Increase Focus on Student Care with Third Party Billing

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As a student care provider, you no doubt want to center your efforts on the quality of care that your students are receiving. Whether you manage a boarding high school, a small college or a university, you are likely experiencing some difficulties in terms of billing, particularly if you’re trying to handle it all in-house. This taxes your existing staff, increases chances for costly mistakes, and can be detrimental to your bottom line as accounts receivables are not enforced like they should be.

Your students need quality care, that’s a given. It’s also a fact that they have to be billed for those services. Generally, health care services are not covered under tuition costs. This is a precarious situation because many students are still included on their parents’ health plan. But what works in terms of billing for the parents may not necessarily work well on the student end. Students, especially young ones who may only be 14 starting out their first year at a boarding school, need extra TLC. They are in a new environment, they have questions that Mom or Dad can’t answer and they need help. That’s where you come in.

As such, it’s important that you streamline your medical billing efforts to bring an increased focus to student care.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, more than 20 million students were enrolled at American colleges and universities in 2015, an increase of nearly five million since 2000. All of those students require quality care.

How Third Party Billing Helps

When it comes to student health billing, consider a third party provider to handle all this. You may currently divide billing among your staff, or perhaps you have an in-house employee that takes care of this. Either way, you could be losing money. Not only that, you could be devoting so much time on billing tasks and chasing down payments that you are failing in your most integral role: caregiver.

So, why should you outsource to a billing service? The main reason is to establish a new revenue stream through the reduction of self-pay billable line items. Those streams that you may have believed uncollectible now have the ability to be recouped, presenting a whole new possibility for revenue and growth potential. This is a good thing, especially in an economic climate where the recovery rate for non-hospitals is 21 percent for healthcare debt and collections, says ACA International.

Medical billing is demanding, draining, time-consuming and challenging. Taxing your staff with these challenges absolutely takes away time and resources better spent with your young patients. In addition to increased focus on student care, you can experience these benefits from hiring a third party biller:

  • Reduce billing errors
  • Save thousands of dollars annually on salaries and benefits, office supplies, furniture, billing software maintenance and computer equipment
  • Reduce billing interruptions due to employee absence
  • Improve patient satisfaction
  • Ensure billing compliance
  • Increase revenue

Sound like an asset to your school? Contact Medical Healthcare Solutions to learn how to make this a reality.

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How the 2016 Election Could Impact Your Practice

How the 2016 Election Could Impact Your Practice

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Sure, you may have a personal opinion on who should win the upcoming 2016 presidential election, but take a minute to think of the professional ramifications of the candidate who wins next week. A lot rides on the winner of the election, particularly when it comes to healthcare and how it affects your practice, whether you’re in the dental, surgical or medical industry. Healthcare is a hot-button issue with both candidates, and how they approach our national healthcare system will have far-reaching effects over the next four years and beyond.

Affordable Care Act: What Now?

The Affordable Care Act, implemented by current president Obama, and what happens to it after this election, lies uniquely in the hands of each candidate. If Hillary Clinton takes over, the act will stay largely intact, utilized as a basis for continuing the program. She wants to expand program coverage through the use of tax credits and reductions in out-of-pocket costs, plus she wants to include uninsured families no matter what their immigration status may be. Should Donald Trump be elected, he will ask Congress to repeal the Affordable Care Act, replacing it with new proposals that focus on free-market competition to keep costs down. He wants to get rid of governmental mandates that say every person must purchase health insurance or face fees. He also wants to allow inter-state competition among health insurance companies, provided their plans comply with each state’s regulations.

Impacts on Medicaid

This is another area of concern for many people across the country. Hillary Clinton wants to continue to allow states that request Medicaid expansion to get a total match for the first three years. Expanding Medicaid, in her view, would bring about full coverage for the ones who need it most. Donald Trump wants to enlist block-grant funding for Medicaid, meaning appropriate funding would be doled out to each state, with each state then deciding how best to spend that amount based on the needs of their residents. The aim is to cut down on federal involvement, boosting the power of each state instead and thus reducing corruption of the system.

Pharmaceutical Prices

With the cost of prescription drugs constantly on the rise, many people simply cannot afford the drugs they need to get well and stay well. Clinton wants to crack down on pharmaceutical companies for hiking up their rising prices, instead rewarding them for research investment, promising to lower the cost of prescription drugs for middle-class families and senior citizens. Trump plans to reduce pharmaceutical costs through a free-market approach by removing barriers to entry into free markets and giving people better and easier access to lower-cost imported drugs from overseas.

Medical professionals know all too well how fast the industry is changing. It practically takes a PhD just to keep up with them all! The vote you cast on November 8 will impact your healthcare practice now and in the future, so vote wisely. Take the time to research each candidate’s position, making a bullet list of each factor that you feel would most impact your practice. Good luck and get out and vote next week!

Contact Medical Healthcare Solutions

For more information on what we offer to make your healthcare practice easier to operate, contact us today or fill out our convenient online form. We apply the latest medical billing technology in order to meet and exceed even your most challenging medical billing needs, from electronic health records and practice management services to ASC Revenue Cycle Management services. If you have questions on further ways the 2016 election will impact your practice, give us a call.

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