What Can A Medical Billing Company Do Prevent Errors?

Aug 17

When it comes to the financial health of a medical practice accurate medical billing process plays an important part. The medical billing process is prone to billing errors such as wrong coding, incorrect patient data, incorrect medical transcription, missing information and wrong procedure codes. This results in a loss of significant revenue that could otherwise be used to improve the practice and patient care. Not only this, but these errors also risk the reputation of the practice and cause federal penalties. This is why it is better to outsource your billing and medical transcription services from a third party. A medical billing company ensures that the medical billing process of medical practice is free from errors. Companies like U Control Billing have a well-trained, detail-oriented, and up-to-date billing staff who understand all sorts of billing procedures.

Suppose you have billing staff who are not fully trained and fail to stay updated with the ever-changing billing regulations. In that case, it is the right time for you to outsource your internal medicine billing and transcription services from a good medical billing company!

How Medical Billing Company Prevent Errors?

Here is how a medical billing company can be beneficial for your medical practice's financial health and revenue cycle:

Keep Patient Information Correct And Properly Aligned

Patient information often gets mixed up or missing when a medical practice does its billing in-house. This is because the internal staff is usually busy with patient care and other undertakings. To avoid incorrect or missing patient names, addresses, DOB, sex, insurance information, and dates of treatment that cause denials and rejection, most medical practices opt for outsourcing. Medical billing companies avoid such mistakes by double-checking everything and verifying each detail about the case and patient before submitting the claim.

Access To Trained Medical Billing And Coding Staff

Medical practice must have a well-trained staff to avoid medical billing and coding errors. Insurers always check procedure codes and the diagnosis information; therefore, when an ill-trained staff uses incorrect codes or initiates a treatment without medical necessity leads to claims denials and rejections. A medical billing company can access the best medical billers and coders who prevent all such errors. These experts completely understand all procedural and diagnosis codes and know how to deal with claim denials and rejections.

Use The Latest Coding Manual

The codes, rules and regulations involved in the medical billing process keep changing; that is why it is important to stay updated to avoid errors. When the staff of medical practice uses outdated medical coding, it often results in claim denials and rejections that negatively affect the practice's revenue cycle. Medical billing companies ensure that all their coders and billers are up to date regarding the latest medical billing regulations and guidelines. Medical billing companies provide training sessions to ensure that coders and billers are up to date. This is why when medical practices outsource from a medical billing company, they get seamless processing of medical claims in time without losing revenue.

Avoid Upcoding Or Undercoding.

Upcoding and undercoding are both ill practices that help a medical practice financially, but both are illegal and are considered a felony. Upcoding and undercoding may be done deliberately or by mistake as well. It is called upcoding when codes are entered into the bill for unprovided services just to inflate the amount. Undercoding happens when codes are left out on the bill to avoid audits. This mistake usually happens from an inexperienced staff. Medical billing companies have coders and billers with years of experience and understanding, so they avoid such errors.

Ensure That Patients' Data Is Safe

Patient data is one of the medical practice's most important and sensitive data. It is very important to safeguard such data because hackers breach the patient's privacy and illegally use their sensitive information. Patient information includes many things, including addresses, family tree, medical history, bank accounts, etc. Patient data in medical practice is often transferred back and forth between the providers and insurers. Medical billing companies ensure that this information is shared via a safe platform that takes care of this highly personal and incredibly valuable. Also, HIPPA-compliant medical billing companies ensure that the security of the information is never compromised while exchanges between the providers and payers occur.

Accurate Medical Transcription Services

It has been reported that around 30% of medical transcription of medical orders is done wrong. The majority of these inaccuracies occur due to the following reasons:

Numerical mix-ups
Misinterpretation of homophones
Confusion between similar-sounding words

Medical transcription errors are very dangerous and can put lives in danger, which is why professionals must perform such a task. Medical billing companies provide medical transcription services from experts, ensuring that such terrible situations are always avoided. In order to ensure correct transcription, they perform a word-to-word inspection of the transcript and ensure that the final document is 100% accurate.

Use Advanced Medical Billing Software

Medical practices are often tight on budget, and the medical billing software is often very expensive. But medical billing software is very important as they help a practice to perform the process of medical billing and coding accurately without any errors. Therefore, medical practices outsource from a medical billing company that uses advanced medical billing software to avoid coding errors before submitting a claim. Medical billing companies usually own advanced software that ensures minimum or no claim denials, claim refusals or pending claims. Also, the staff of a medical billing company is well trained on how to use such software that can prevent most internal medicine billing errors.

Filing Claims Within Designated Deadlines

The time of filing claims is very important, and every insurer has set its time limit for submitting claims. Most claim filling ranges from 60 days to one year. When a claim is rejected or denied, a medical practice is given an additional 35 to 45 days to resubmit them. But when a challenged claim is not submitted on time, it usually is written off ]. This implies that millions of dollars are lost, and the practice's revenue is a huge gap. Medical billing companies usually have an automatic system that alerts them of the deadlines to submit the claims. This helps them avoid missing the time limits of the claims and saves the medical practice's revenue.

Let Us Wrap Up!

A medical billing company has an experienced staff that can provide numerous benefits to medical practice. By outsourcing, you get a streamlined process of medical billing and coding. They also ensure that all the claims have correct codes and are always submitted on time, so no revenue is lost. Also, they provide good medical transcription services to ensure the practice's reputation is always secured. This way, you can also unstress your medical staff from the hustle of internal medicine billing and provide them with time to spend on patient care. If you are looking for the best medical billing and transcription services, U Control Billing is the best billing company for you and the financial health of your practice!