Medical Billing Blog

It might seem convenient to outsource your billing to a billing service around the corner, but geography shouldn’t be the primary consideration when selecting an outsourced medical billing company. Instead, education, experience, and technology are the most important criteria to look for in a qualified billing service. Out of state billing companies can offer a variety of services that may not be available in your local area, so outsourcing out of state should be a real consideration in those instances. There are even practices that outsource overseas with satisfactory results, although many practices are bringing their billing back to the states for a variety of reasons—language barriers being only one of them. Here at Medical Billing Resources we have clients across the country.

Maintaining the security of Protected Health Information (PHI) can be a menace to the modern physician. With all your other responsibilities, how are you to make time to study how to protect information and know what to do in case of a breach? It can be daunting to consider what could happen if your practice experiences a breach of security with this information, and it’s also confusing to know what needs to be reported and what does not.

It is difficult to evaluate your own in-house billing operation. Unless you have billing expertise, you simply cannot tell how much money is lost due to improper coding, misuse of modifiers (causing denials and incorrect payments) and lack of effective follow-up.

For many practices, the question of whether or not to outsource the medical billing function has been on the back burner for some time. We say it’s time to take an objective look at the issue and bring yourself closer to making a decision that could be a shot in the arm for the financial health of your practice. Ask yourself just how much it costs you –in hard costs and soft costs—to keep the billing function in-house. 

In the first two installments of this blog post about internet marketing for physicians, or inbound marketing as it’s called (SEO & Blogs, Social Media), we discussed the basics surrounding social media—Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+—and the importance of blogging and social media engagement in boosting the selling power of your website.  We also discussed Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and the importance of having your website optimized so you rank on the first page of search results for specific keywords designed to attract your ideal patient.

By Ralph Sitler III, JD--As all medical providers know, an extensive knowledge of HIPAA and its various regulations is key to a successful and compliant practice.  Maintaining confidentiality of your patients and their health information should always be foremost in your thoughts when you are running your practice.  However, some areas of HIPAA can prove to be confusing.  One of these areas concerns the confidentiality provisions for minors and the ability of their parents to access their protected health information.  This article will give an overview of applicable provisions to help clarify this topic and help keep your practice compliant.

When it comes to retaining medical billing records, current guidelines require that records be retained for a period of four years—the “lookback” period during which the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has the right to amend payments made to physicians for whatever reason is deemed appropriate.  However, CMS has proposed changing the current four year lookback period to a ten year lookback period—and retaining the right to conduct takebacks for that long, as well. The Proposed Rule was posted by CMS in the Federal Register on February 16, 2012. The proposed 10-year lookback period would be consistent with the False Claims Act statute of limitations under a provision of the Affordable Care Act. The effect of this change in the statute of limitations for taking back funds previously paid to providers is also consistent with the aggressive stance the OIG is taking toward healthcare fraud.

In the last installment of this blog article, we covered some of the basic components of an internet marketing program for physicians, such as SEO, Blogs, Organic Search and Long-tail Keywords. In this installment, we will discuss Social Media sites and their importance to your inbound marketing plan.

By Christine Moore, CPC, CGSC--Even though Modifier 58 and Modifier 78 have similar meaning and wording, there are a few tips that will help in choosing the correct global period modifier when billing claims.

You have probably heard about internet marketing for physicians in one form or another, whether it’s all the talk about social media--Facebook, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube, or whether it’s all the talk about SEO, Organic Search, Landing Pages, Conversions, and Blogs.