Is Outsourcing Your Medical Billing a Good Idea?

Deciding if and when to outsource your medical billing tasks to a third-party is one of the most important choices that a provider will ever make. Choose wisely, and revenues will be more and headaches will be less. Choose foolishly, and the provider will have more work cut out for them after outsourcing their medical billing.

Chris Thorman, who blogs at Software Advice, recently wrote an article pointing out some of the major points that a provider will need to evaluate when deciding whether or not to outsource their medical billing services. In the article, he evaluated costs and other qualitative factors that goes into this important decision.

Chris’ came to the conclusion that hiring a medical billing service resulted in a higher net income than doing it in-house. Chris was also quick to point out that only quality, efficient services, are able to earn this extra income for their clients. Not all billing services are the same. To read the rest of Chris’ article, click here.

Senate Passes Freeze on Medicare Cuts

$138 Billion Bill Approved

The Senate voted 62-36 to approve a $138 billion bill that would temporarily prevent Medicare payment cuts to doctors. H.R. 4213 extends the freeze until Sept. 30, 2010.

Medicare Cuts Payments by 21%

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With the failing of the Senate to repeal a bill that reduces reimbursements for Medicare, a 21% cut on payments to physicians went into effect March 1, 2010. Medicare is notifying their contractors to hold Medicare claims for 10 business days effective today. Claims will begin processing on March 15th with the reduced rates. There is still a chance that Congress may reverse this decision. Stay tuned.

Senate Approves 30-Day Postponement of 21% Medicare Cuts

The Senate passed the jobs bill late Tuesday night that includes the postponing of the 21% cut in Medicare reimbursement. Doctors get another 30 days before the Medicare cuts take effect. Hopefully Congress will act and rescind the cuts because doctors are already getting there reimbursements cut by commercial insurance companies.

HITECH Act Privacy and Security

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Changes to Current HIPAA Laws and Regulations

My colleague Jonathan Krasner at Business Engineering, Inc. in Reston, Virginia sent me the following information about HIPAA changes that take effect this week. His information pertains to physician offices, medical billing companies, hospitals and a host of other healthcare facilities and vendors.

Congress passed and President Barack Obama signed the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act (ARRA) in February, 2009.  The healthcare IT component of the ARRA is commonly referred to as the HITECH (Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health) Act.  The HITECH Act covers a broad range of healthcare IT initiatives including providing over $20 billion in funding towards implementation of healthcare IT.  The HITECH Act also includes “Subtitle D” which focuses on privacy and modifies and broadens portions of the HIPAA Privacy and Security laws and regulations.  The following is a high level overview of how the HITECH Act impacts current HIPAA laws and regulations.  This first section is an overview of the changes that will go into effect on February 17, 2010; changes that were or will be effective on other dates are summarized on the second page of this document.

Application of Security/ Privacy Rules to Business Associates

Business Associates (BA’s – generally defined as those who do not work for a covered entity (CE) but handle protected health information (PHI)) will now be required to directly comply with the Administrative Safeguards, Physical Safeguards, Technical Safeguards and Policies and Procedures provisions of the existing HIPAA Security Rule.  Similarly, BA’s are now directly bound by the privacy rules in the existing HIPAA regulations.  They are also now directly subject to civil and criminal penalties [Read more...]

What Does it Take to Qualify for the EHR Stimulus Funds?

I came across a webinar that explains qualifying for the federal governments stimulus funds for Electronic Health Records under the HITECH Act in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).  The audio seminar covers:

  • How the stimulus money will be paid out
  • What it takes to qualify for funding
  • Which specialties qualify for funding
  • How “meaningful use” is defined
  • What constitutes a “qualified EHR”

The webinar last about an hour and is well worth the listen to learn how your practice can take advantage of the government incentives.

To listen to the webinar go to http://bit.ly/6tvLWX .

Capture Billing Now Podcasts on iTunes with its Medical Billing Minute

We are excited to have our Medical Billing Minute as a podcast on iTunes.  We are hoping more people will be able to access our videos that contain tips on medical billing and practice management.  Through our videos we hope to educate physicians, healthcare mangers and medical billers on various topics that are relevant and help healthcare providers run their medical practices’ more efficiently.

To subscribe to our podcast and have it downloaded automatically to your PC or phone, just visit iTunes and search for Medical Billing Minute or Capture Billing. Don’t have iTunes?  Download it at http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/.

Medicare Eliminates Consultation Codes for Doctors

Medicare Eliminates Consultation Codes

Now that Physicians cannot bill Medicare for consultations how will they get paid for patient care? Capture’s medical billing video explains how in easy to understand terms.

Washington, DC (Vocus) – December 15, 2009 On January 1, 2010 Medicare will eliminate consultation codes. These codes are what healthcare providers submit to Medicare for reimbursement when a patient is seen for a medical consultation, whether in a provider’s office or hospital setting. Healthcare providers, coders and medical billers will have to learn new ways to [Read more...]

Medicare Eliminates Consultation Codes

Medical Billing Video Helps explain the New Way to Code Consultations
Specialty physicians code lots of consultations  but as of January 1, 2010 Medicare is eliminating all inpatient and outpatient consultation codes. This will make medical billing for consults more complicated. So how are physicians suppose to bill for their services and get paid?  Lets take a look at how by playing the video.

 

Medical Billing Minute - Elimination of Medicare Consultation Codes

 

Video Released to Help Physicians Bill Insurance for the H1N1 Swine Flu

With Healthcare Reform just around the corner and all the new regulations already placed on physicians in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), Capture Billing & Consulting, Inc., is helping doctors and medical billers wade thorough and sort out information with its new Medical Billing Minute videos.  The one minute long videos will cover a multitude of topics relevant for today’s physicians to help them through the maze of coding, billing and compliance regulations. The first video walks physicians through how to properly bill for the H1N1 Swine Flu Vaccine.

Capture will produce videos to help doctors code and document properly and tell them of governmental regulations that will affect their practice. Some episodes will give tips to medical billers on how to deal with insurance companies that stall or deny coverage for patients and how to overcome the obstacles they put up.  The company plans to produce ove 60 Medical Billing Minute videos.

Healthcare professionals can subscribe to the Medical Billing Minute by going to the Capture Billing website or blog, to  YouTube.com or finding Capture on  Twitter.

Click here to see our H1N1 Video.

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