Efficient medical billing and coding are essential for healthcare providers to achieve adequate revenue. However, this revenue cycle management journey is full of complexities, and it poses significant stress to healthcare providers.
A range of errors can occur in the medical billing and coding processes. They may seem minor but lead to claim denial and revenue leakage. That is why it becomes crucial for healthcare providers to navigate through medical billing challenges.
The aim is to eliminate the intricacies and maximize reimbursement while streamlining the operational flow. Managing administrative tasks along with patients can be a struggle for healthcare providers. As a result, they lean towards medical billing services to attain their revenue goals.
Medical billing and coding errors must be avoided to boost revenue!
This blog is the ultimate guide for minimizing medical billing errors and improving overall productivity.
Let’s plunge into all the things that you need to do to prevent errors.
Key Points to Ensure Efficient Medical Billing and Coding
Verify Patient Details and Align the Data to Check Accuracy
Checking the accuracy of data can prevent further errors in coding and claim filing. There are various aspects that must be checked to verify patient details.
So, the information can be mismatched, wrong or missing and errors can be in the name, date of birth, address, medical history, insurance details and many more.
That is why a side-by-side comparison of actual information and entered information is a must. Healthcare providers can avoid such inaccurate entries by ensuring a double-checking system.
Take Measures to Avoid Upcoding
Upcoding occurs when more claims are filed for reimbursement than the actual number of patients treated. This can happen if there are any entry mistakes during claim filing.
This is a manual error that can be prevented with the help of professional medical coders.
Many healthcare practices do upcoding deliberately and that is why it is unlawful. If a healthcare practice is caught upcoding, it is subject to legal consequences.
As a result, healthcare providers must avoid upcoding to improve their medical billing and coding process. If they are facing issues regarding coding, they can shift to medical billing services to obtain preferable results.
Make Sure to Keep Coding Up to Date
The medical billing process is very dynamic with frequent changes in coding guidelines and regulatory standards. As most of the errors occur in coding, it becomes significant to keep up with coding changes regularly.
For this, healthcare providers need to be familiar with recent coding manuals and important CPT/ICD-10 codes according to their specialty.
Knowing the current codes will help healthcare providers in avoiding medical billing and coding mistakes and enhance the bottom line.
Focus On Eradicating Duplicate Billing
Duplicate billing happens when a patient is charged many times for a treatment they availed only once. This is a blunder that leads to rejection and denial of claims. Not only this, but healthcare providers also face reputational damage and they come across as fraud.
Healthcare providers must take active measures to eliminate duplicate billing to prevent denials and negative attention.
Do the Insurance Eligibility Verification Beforehand
Insurance eligibility verification is one of the initial steps of medical billing and coding. The accuracy at this step determines if the claims are going to be correct or not.
This makes it an important step that must not be neglected at any cost. Verifying the insurance coverage is for the awareness of healthcare providers and patients. Healthcare providers get to know if they are qualified for revenue and patients can know their financial responsibility.
To avoid denials, healthcare providers must be proactive and check eligibility thoroughly. While performing this step, healthcare providers need to verify overall medical coverage, policy terms and alternatives for co-payment.
Seek Assistance from Professional Medical Billers
There is no doubt that dealing with medical billing and coding is a hassle for healthcare providers. Most of the time, healthcare providers are unable to achieve adequate revenue because they lack knowledge and skills.
Other than that, the dynamic nature of medical billing is difficult to keep up with. Healthcare providers have limited time, and they give most of it to patient care.
Amidst this, administrative tasks suffer, and errors happen that lead to denials and financial instability.
One solution that can take away the medical billing burden and improve the workflow is medical billing services. Such services work with a team of professional medical billers and medical coders, who are skilled in this task.
They are well-versed with the frequent coding changes, and they employ advanced technologies to eliminate manual errors. All in all, they provide valuable medical billing solutions that can elevate financial performance.
That is why healthcare providers and practices must seek assistance from professional medical billers and coders.
Enhance Revenue with Unify Healthcare Services
Unify Healthcare Services is a leading medical billing company with years of experience in dealing with complex medical billing and coding. With a team of professionals, we devote our time to solving medical billing complexities.
Our expert billers make sure that there are no drawbacks in the entire process and our coders take care of medical coding. We utilize cutting edge technology to keep the data safe, secure and free from human errors.
We work to meet the unique requirements of your healthcare practice and never miss any claim submission deadline. Our practice is HIPAA compliant and ensures complete safeguarding of your patient’s sensitive information.
From patient registration to insurance verification and claim filing, we take care of everything. Every detail is important to us and hence we maintain its accuracy throughout the process.
Our goal is to enhance your revenue by improving the operational flow and practice management.
Choose Unify Healthcare Services for efficient medical billing and coding!