Medical Billing Challenges Affecting Your Revenue

Common Medical Billing Challenges Affecting Your Revenue

Navigating the complex terrain of medical billing can be filled with costly and terrifying pitfalls. Any flaws in the billing process might substantially impede the treatment process, affecting patient care.

Mistakes in this area might result in lost revenue or even legal difficulties for your healthcare business, ranging from simple transcription errors to costly coding issues.

new analysis by MHS reveals “Four in five U.S. medical bills contain at least minor mistakes—costing the nation $68 billion annually in unnecessary healthcare spending by doctors and patients alike.”

Every year, clinics face new medical billing issues. If these issues are not addressed appropriately, they can result in an administrative load, employee burnout, and reimbursement delays.

The High Stakes of Medical Billing

Consider a real-life scenario, if a person requires an emergency medical treatment, which necessitates a brief hospital stay. Months later, he would receive an itemized statement outlining the costs of several treatments, drugs, saline drips, and other line items, some of which are not covered by the patient's insurance coverage. The majority of people simply pay the amount due, no questions asked.

Insurance firms may examine bills with great care, but they frequently fail to detect administrative issues or inconsistencies. As a result, many people wind up overpaying. The truth is that medical bills are frequently filled with billing errors, many of which go unnoticed until after a provider has been reimbursed—if the errors are detected at all.

Either way, erroneous medical bills raise costs for insurance companies and employers, siphoning away money.

Top 6 Medical Billing Difficulties You May Encounter

Your medical billing practices influence every aspect of your practice, from updating patient information to dealing with denials. Here are the top medical billing difficulties and how to avoid them in your practice. Let’s take an in-depth look at these common challenges:

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Incorrect Patient Identifier Information

Patient misidentification generates duplicates and overlays, jeopardizes patient safety, causes issues with patient data integrity, and clears the path for medical identity theft.

Improper Coding Errors

Improper medical claim coding is one of the most prevalent and time-consuming errors committed by physical therapy practices. There are various reasons why claims are incorrectly coded:

• Making use of obsolete coding books
  Unbundling of costs that should be handled under the same process code
  Upbilling and underbuilding
  Mismatched codes
  Missing codes
  Billing CPT codes that are not in your insurance carrier’s contract

Missing Referral or Authorization

Before receiving some healthcare treatments, individuals are frequently needed to obtain a reference from their primary care providers. In the absence of such recommendation or authorization from patient services, claims may be denied. Before filing claims, your staff must understand carrier constraints and engage with patients to obtain the appropriate reference or authorization.

Missing Documentation in Claims

To settle certain claims, every insurance company demands paperwork. They will not hesitate to deny any claim that does not have adequate paperwork. You should incorporate efficient medical billing software that makes attaching documents easy, in addition to properly teaching your staff on how to file claims.

Service Not Covered by insurance

Patients are often unaware that the treatment they require is no longer covered by their insurance until it comes time to pay. This can occur as a result of a job change or anything similar. You may avoid this issue by verifying patients' coverage at each appointment.

Lack of Patient Education on medical billing

Patients typically have inadequate understanding of medical bills. Some people may be unaware that the treatment they are attempting to obtain requires a referral or authorization, or that their insurance coverage has changed for whatever reason. The obvious approach is to educate and enlighten patients about fiscal responsibility.

In Conclusion

It takes a tremendous amount of effort for your billing team to handle medical coding, and even a small mistake can cause you a lot of trouble.

Do you wish to enhance your revenue cycle by avoiding medical billing and coding errors?

Outsourcing your RCM services gives providers access to a plethora of support services that improve their medical billing efficiencyand bottom line. These services include coding, scrubbing, claims management, denials, appeals, timely follow-up with medical billing professionals, and so on.

There are a number of additional issues that healthcare facilities encounter when it comes to medical billing, but those highlighted here are the most significant. Most of these obstacles may be addressed with the correct medical billing system, which is where we come in.

Aegis assists healthcare providers with revenue cycle management services. We use our knowledge to help healthcare practitioners across varied states of the US. We are a team of the best minds in the industry who will be the driving force behind your revenue growth.

Contact us to discuss your medical billing specifications, and we will schedule a demo for you.