Thursday, September 20, 2012

What Do Medical Billing Services Do For Hospitals?

By Frederick M. Normane


Medical billing services, are services that can be packaged up into a discrete concept and sent to an outside business to worry about. This is a fairly common practice amongst small doctor's firms and hospitals. They help make sure that these medical providers are paid for the services they render to patients. These providers often see lots of patients, even thousands of patients a year. Likewise, a small clinic or hospital that can't afford to specialize may be rapidly overwhelmed and form a bottleneck. So, these doctors' offices bring in an outside service to handle the billing for them.

Billing should begin when you get a customer and start to ask for the necessary information to bill them. The address, phone number, and their insurance information is all patient data that the clinic employees gather as soon as an appointment is made. Then, the doctor sees the patient and decides on a treatment plan. After the patient leaves that appointment, their information is updated and their files are processed for the day. A batch of patient files from that day are sent over to the billing company.

At the medical billing services office, it can take up to several months for a claim to be completely processed and paid. Much of the timing is due to how soon the patient will pay, how fast the bill is sent out or how exactly the insurance company responds. The medical billing specialist will review each patient's information and treatment and compare that to services that are paid for by their insurance company and also the typical charge for each service applied by the doctor's office. This data is processed into a payment request that is sent to the insurance company to pay. The medical billing company also sends a bill for the difference to the patient.

The insurance company adjustors will look over the bill and either approve payment or deny it based on their interpretation of the patient's insurance policy. If the insurance company agrees to the bill, they will either deposit money into the doctor's office checking account or send the money to the medical billing specialist to be paid out the doctor's office. Bills sent to a patient can be paid by check, money order, credit card number or ACH transfer. Claims rejected by the insurance company can be submitted again by the billing specialist as an appeal. If the patient doesn't pay within the desired timeframe, second and third notices will be sent out before the case is referred to collections.

Medical billing companies handle of the everyday hassles of securing payment for doctors and hospitals. First off, you must obtain the standard patient billing information, insurance as well as, contacts and identification to send to the medical biller. After this, the paperwork, keeping track of the payment process and receiving and notifying offices of payment will be handled by the medical billing team.




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