| Cardiologist Need Specialized Medical Billing Services |
View Comments
| Business - Business |
| Written by Carl Mays II |
| Thursday, 18 September 2008 05:06 |
|
Medical billers and medical billing services are the financial backbone of a medical practice. Practices that do not have the right medical billing expertise in their corner can easily lose more than 20 percent of their practice's potential revenue.
Medical billers and medical billing services are the financial backbone of a medical practice. Practices that do not have the right medical billing expertise in their corner can easily lose more than 20 percent of their practice's potential revenue. Medical billing outsourcing is a growing trend that medical practices and facilities are employing to level the playing field with insurance companies. Potential outsourcing options start with individual medical billers working from their home to medical billing services that with thousands of providers. Although the complexity of basic medical billing is quite high, it pales in comparison to the complications that come to play for cardiology billing. Successful navigation of the payers' policies and procedures for paying surgery claims requires specialized knowledge that comes from experience with billing for cardiologists. With cardiologists facing ever increasing costs they must insure that money is not being left on the table because they have a billing company that is not a cardiac billing expert. Cardiologists must also be aware that that many billing companies that claim cardio billing expertise actually outsource their cardiovascular billing work to at home billers. Situations like this are fraught with risk since the remote workers are not working in a controlled and monitored environment. One of the major drawbacks of hiring a company that does not specialize in cardiology billing is their lack of familiarity with the procedures and the terminologies used. Even if the medical billing company serves one or two cardiologists, they will lack the depth and breadth of expertise required for successful cardiovascular billing. Moreover if the hired company does not specialize in billing for cardiologists, then they will not have the expertise to effectively appeal denied claims or answer questions raised by the insurance companies. A typical shortcoming with medical billing services that do not specialize in cardiology billing is the inability to properly track and pursue insurance underpayments. These underpayments cost most cardiologists about 10% of their potential income. If a medical billing company does not understand the multi procedure rules and have a system that can track underpayments (and does not flag every payment on a second procedure as underpaid), they will find it difficult to capture this lost revenue is a systematic manner. It is not only insurance billing that is more complicated for cardiologists; patient billing is also more difficult. The patients often have high balances, complicated explanations from their payers and do not understand all of the invoices they are receiving from their cardiologist. A billing company that has strong cardiology billing experience has spoken with patient about such statements many times before. A less skilled patient collection effort could leave the cardiologists with less money and unhappy patients. The bottom-line: It is not worth the risk for a cardiologist to use a billing company that is not as focused as he or she is on cardiology. Just as a patient should not go to a family doctor for complex cardiovascular diagnostics, a cardiologist should not go to a generalist billing company for medical billing. Copyright 2008 by Carl Mays II About the Author: Carl's company, Cardiology Billing Partners is a specialized medical billing service that focuses 100% on cardiovascular billing. Do not choose a medical billing service until you have spoken to Cardiology Billing Partners and learned about the benefits of specialized medical billing services. |