5 Common Mistakes Family Practice Physicians Make With Their Medical Billing
Mar 30, 2022
You may be missing out on opportunities to increase your family practice’s collections due to medical billing mistakes. Check out these 5 common mistakes family practice physicians are making when it comes to their medical billing. Plus, simple solutions you can take today to make the most of your medical billing.
1. Coding Is Not Specific
Every single diagnosis and procedure in your office should be coded to the highest level for that specific code. This means it should be coded to the highest number of digits that can be used for that code for more accurate billing.
Solution
Hire a specialist who understands medical billing in and out specifically for family practices. You may consider outsourcing to a medical billing firm that can provide you with a skilled professional already trained in family practice medical billing. Alternatively, you could hire or train your own medical billing staff to work in-house.
2. Claim Isn’t Filed On Time
Double-check the window of time you have to submit claims. If you don’t have your claims submitted on time you can lose out on collections, hurting your practice’s profitability.
Solution
Check into timely filings and set up a system to ensure your claims are always filed on time. This may mean hiring someone specifically to handle filing claims or it may require outsourcing to a medical billing company that can handle this process for you.
3. Not Verifying Insurance
Not verifying the insurance of a patient is a common medical billing pitfall but it shouldn’t be one you make regularly. If a patient’s insurance has changed and the change isn’t verified, you may end up providing procedures that aren’t covered by insurance.
Solution
Verify a patient’s insurance every single time they come in for a visit.
4. Not Billing Enough (Underbilling)
Your practice can’t afford to underbill for your services as a family practitioner. Not billing enough often comes from simply not being aware of the proper billing rules and the coding options available.
Solution
Outsource to a medical coding company that can ensure you are billing to the full extent to maximize your profits as a practice.
5. Improper Coding
Coding that isn’t specific is a problem on its own but improper coding to start is an even bigger problem. Improper coding can lead to rejected claims and refiling which takes more time to get to collections.
You’ll also need to be especially careful when it comes to improper coding in its relationship to fraud. If you are billing the wrong code for better reimbursement you are setting yourself up to be audited and held responsible for fraud.
Solution
Outsource your medical billing to take the stress and headache that comes with potential improper coding off your plate.
Get the Most From Your Medical Billing
It’s important that your medical billing is accurate and timely in order to improve the profits of your family practice. By outsourcing your medical billing you get access to medical billers who are up to date on the latest medical billing training specific to your specialty as a family practice physician. This also alleviates pressure from your staff and yourself, allowing you to have lower overhead for employee expenses and take back time you can spend seeing more patients.
For informational purposes only.
"My husband and I have a small practice but we were looking for a medical billing company to consult us. We originally started with a local company with some satisfaction. However, our biggest problem was that they wanted us to change our existing EMR to software that they worked with. Quest National Services worked with our existing software so that we didn’t have to make expensive changes to our infrastructure. That saved us a lot of time and headache. I would definitely say that was one of the main reasons for why we switched and why we continue to work with Quest. As a small practice, they helped us without draining our resources."
Adriana C.
