Wednesday 31 July 2013

Billers and Coders Show a Stronger Incline towards Hospital Billing Jobs than Private Practices

Medical billers and coders have become an indispensible resource for healthcare practices.  According to a recent poll done by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the job market for healthcare skilled workers is the fastest growing occupation in the medical billing industry. Billers and coders are in an advantageous position of choosing the discipline they want to join. They are no longer limited to physician practices and have now ventured into diverse healthcare branches such as hospitals, special care centers, convalescent homes, hospice, HMOs’ and even joined insurance companies or become remote consultants.
What has created this boom for Medical Billers and Coders?
  • Insurance claim filing procedures have become lengthy and time consuming. This has created a need for medical transcriptionists who can dedicate time and code claims appropriately.
  • Earlier insurance companies directly dispersed the payments to medical providers but due to increasing complexities of this method, a shortage of skilled administrative staff was felt which in turn led to creating more billing and coding jobs.
  • With increasing number of patients, physician practices found it harder to deal with excessive paper work required to fill in insurance claims.
  • An increasing necessity for medical attention in the aging population is also responsible for accelerating the demand for billing specialists.
  • The constant need to regulate billing cycles led to creation of a pool of specialists who could accurately code claims and streamline the billing process as per HIPAA standards.
Employer Size influences the Pay Scale of Billers and Coders
Medical billers and coders find themselves amidst a wave of reformation that has washed over the healthcare industry. They are being sought after like never before. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics survey confirms that the salary package for billers and coders ranges between $20,850 and $51,510 depending on their experience, specialization, location and type of employer. Hospitals seem to attract more billers and coders than any other discipline. A simple explanation for this choice is better remuneration offered by hospitals to healthcare technicians. The average wage for a biller and coder in a Hospital is $35,870 as opposed to $28,460 in a physician’s office.
Other benefits that make Hospitals a preferred place of work for medical staff are benefits like job security, working with a diverse group of specialists, better growth and development opportunities and rewards and recognition for good work.
Groups within Healthcare Industry that offer higher wages
It is interesting to note that within the healthcare sector, there are various employers that are ready to offer billers and coders competitive packages for their skills and knowledge in medical billing procedures. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the following are the top paying industries: 
  • Pharmaceutical: $61,210
  • Business, Professional, Labor, or Political Organizations: $ 45,850
  • Federal Government: $45,120

The above salary brackets are dependent on the biller’s and coder’s certification, specialization and tenure in the healthcare industry. Certified coders with more than 20 years of experience can earn up to $50,000 yearly. Larger employers such as Hospitals pay between $44000 and $47000 whereas solo practices manage to disburse up to $39900 on an average to an experienced certified coder. Non-certified coders earn 10-15% less than their certified counterparts. 

MBC connects billers and coders with prospective employers across 50 US states and 40 specialties.  Its comprehensive job board is designed to cater to professional billers and coders who are looking for lucrative careers in the healthcare industry.

Tuesday 30 July 2013

Podiatrists Struggling With Ever Increasing Costs Utilize Efficient Medical Billing Practices to Ensure Maximized Revenue

With continual healthcare reforms and surmounting medical costs, it is becoming increasingly difficult for physicians to maintain healthy revenues and still deliver quality care. Podiatrists struggle the most with ever increasing costs and have to improve their medical billing practices in order to maintain financial viability in the times to come.
In addition, there is a continued preference of patients to seek primary care physicians in foot-related emergencies before being referred to podiatrists. This makes a podiatrist’s job much more challenging in terms of patient information reliability, billing complexities and almost impossible patient billing. Being a specialized care field, Podiatry billing demands a much more extensive knowledge of coding and billing practices along with long term experience in the field of podiatry. Despite an increasing trend of outsourcing billing processes to maximize efficiency and offer better care to patients, there are many podiatrists short of resources who still struggle to maximize their revenues.
On an average, Podiatrists lose 10-20% of their potential annual revenue to billing changes and underpayments by insurers. Writing off bill settlements as underpaid doesn’t only cut into revenues but also negatively affects the financial stability of the practice in the long term. Efficient medical billing specific to podiatry is the only way to maximize revenues and balance out the increasing costs. Key aspects of podiatry billing that can magnify your returns are–
  • Primarily, it is important to adapt your EHR templates especially for podiatry and optimize your billing cycle with automation
  • Define which your best revenue streams are and which the worst ones. Aligning your payer mix as per the likelihood of payment can help improve your potential revenue
  • Efficient medical billing also requires constant updating of the billing system with coding changes and Medicare or Medicaid related regulation reforms
  • Reviewing every billing statement issued by the practice can ensure minimal errors and improve the chances of bill processing and payment in the very first attempt
  • Monitoring underpaid claims and denied claims can help you understand podiatry specific rules followed by public and private insurers. Responding to document requirements of insurers as well as filing timely appeals for denied claims can improve your bottom line to a great extent and reduce the rate of non-payment or under-payment
  • Patient billing forms an important part of Podiatric medical billing and comprises of explanation of benefits as well as podiatric terms mentioned on the bills to concerned patients. In order to ensure sustained collections and deliver impeccable customer service, patient billing must be handled by collection and billing experts
See for more inforamtion visit : http://www.medicalbillersandcoders.com/

There is no likely way to control rising costs and changing standards in the healthcare industry. But proficient revenue cycle management and efficient use of medical billing can ease the expense related struggles of podiatrists. Medicalbillersandcoders.com is specialty billing service provider that can reduce the administrative burden of your podiatric practice in terms of billing and revenue management. With a team of healthcare experts serving the industry for more than a decade and offering experienced billing services in different specialty areas, medicalbillersandcoders.com can lend some much needed podiatry knowledge and compliance specificity to your medical billing practices.

Monday 29 July 2013

Medicalbillersandcoders save thousands of dollars for Michigan physicians

Michigan is one of the very high ranking states in terms of doctor to patient ratio, accounting for its enviable healthcare provider status; it is 8th in terms of the number of hospitals in the US and among the top 15 in terms of the number of physicians per 10,000 people. Being one of the most populated states of the US and with more than 10% of its employed population in healthcare sector, Michigan has a large physician population which inevitably requires a pool of competent healthcare assistance in terms of medical billing, coding, and other affiliated administrative processes.
Medicalbillersandcoders have been effectively providing well-qualified and experienced medical billing and coding support to share the burden of healthcare providers for more than 32 specialties in almost all the major cities of Michigan such as Detroit, Grand Rapids, Warren, Sterling Heights, Flint and many more. With constantly up graded knowledge base and skills, and exposure to a wide variety of healthcare providers and latest regulations, MBC billers are a useful and reliable support base for the Michigan healthcare providers.
The importance of efficient billing and administrative professional support to share the burden of physicians was reiterated by a 2010 MDCH (Michigan Department of Community Health) survey of physicians, where 34.8% physicians cited increasing administrative and regulatory burden while 24.3% physicians cited inadequate reimbursement for services as factors contributing to decisions to retire or reduce patient care hours.
These reasons indicate that complying with the latest rules and regulations in the dynamically changing healthcare scenario requires aggressive and pre-emptive efforts from the physicians and their staff which takes its toll on their essential core competencies of patient care, research, and teaching. In fact, the routine processes involved in medical billing and other RCM functions are inevitably intricate requiring specialized skills and are better outsourced to expert professionals for optimum realization.       
Chicago Medical Billing, Los Angeles Medical Billing and San Diego Medical Billing

Keeping in with this context, MBC have expanded their RCM and consultancy services across big cities such as Detroit, Grand Rapids, Warren, Sterling Heights and Flint as also in smaller cities and towns in Michigan. MBC offers comprehensive and customized solutions for optimizing your revenue cycle management as well incorporating the latest innovations in healthcare technology, regulations and compliances; it also focuses on actively motivating the physician’s team to adopt these changes by underlining their relevance and scope in effective patient healthcare and improved revenue cycle management.
“The sweeping changes experienced by the US healthcare industry require considerable investment in terms of finance, resources, as well as training by healthcare providers if they are to be translated meaningfully in to their routine processes and operations”, says the President, medicalbillersandcoders.com, “however, outsourcing the management of these changes to experts such as MBC can significantly ease the process of transition as well as implementation of these upgrades.”

Friday 26 July 2013

Podiatry Practices Falling Short of Collections Turn to MBC For Billing Solutions!

Medicalbillersandcoders billing experts have lately been swamped with escalating demand from podiatry specialists to help counter denials from payers and increase their collection ratio. MBC has witnessed a growing trend amongst these practices and facilities across US for demand of medical billing outsourcing.
The reason behind podiatry practices falling short of collections and losing more than 20% of their practice’s potential revenue can primarily be attributed towards specific challenges linked with billing and patient interaction. MBC recognizes that medical billing expertise is the financial strength and hence extremely essential for this specialty. Billing experts at MBC with significant expertise required to tackle billing challenges; have recently helped numerous specialists across US to maximize collections and revenue.
MBC identified these as prominent Podiatry billing challenges-
  • Practices need to upgrade their medical billing expertise as most podiatry practices face difficulty in being able to properly track and follow up insurance underpayments. MBC’s billing experts believe that “overcoming this shortcoming though challenging; is necessary in order to increase collections; as underpayments generally cost majority of podiatrists approximately 10% of their probable income”
  • Complexities of medical billing encompass patient billing also, and the podiatrists require an efficient billing system which can appropriately bill and interact with patients. Since most patient balances are quite large for the specialty; the patient balance process is quite challenging for most of these specialists. Coupled with this explaining to patients the complicated Explanation Of Benefits and podiatry terminology used on their bills can be quite an insurmountable task for most of the practitioners with time constraints
MBC with its vast experience and expertise has been able to successfully help various practices and facilities evade all these billing related perils.
How can MBC help these specialists overcome the billing challenges?
  • Outsourcing billing solutions at MBC help clients properly track underpayments and capture their lost revenue in a systematic manner. The team of experts are well acquainted with the multi procedure rules and have an accurate evaluation system to track and follow up on underpayments without terming every payment on a second procedure as underpaid
  • MBC offers accurate and updated knowledge on podiatry medical billing, which assists specialists to effectively handle problems faced while clarifying to patients’ complicated Explanation Of Benefits and podiatry terms used on their bills. The increased knowledge and time of specialists eventually helps improve patient interaction and satisfaction, increase patient collections and hence resulting in fewer complains
Various podiatrists facing ever increasing costs have opted for outsourcing their billing to MBC’s billing experts who-
  • Accurately review each billing statement to help ensure it is processed and paid correctly the first time
  • Extensive expertise and expansive experience to successfully follow up and appeal denied claims and accurately respond to insurance payers regarding claims
  • Knowledgeable team who can accurately judge podiatry claims and complex rules utilized by insurance companies
  • In- depth understanding of the specialized industry along with being regularly updated with podiatry billing challenges

medicalbillersandcoders.com experts have grown their client’s bottom lines by handling the entire billing process even as the insurance market changes and federal health care legislation takes effect. MBC has billed for more than 40 podiatrists across US. MBC takes care of the entire billing process including patient demographic information, entering the appropriate CPT and ICD-9 codes, submitting the claims and following them through the process and posting payments.

Thursday 25 July 2013

MedicalBillersandcoders.com caters to the highest number of Radiologists in Ohio

   Radiology practices across the State of Ohio have been rushing to seek MBC’s medical billing services as an increasing number of radiology practice managers in Ohio face complex billing problems in the current healthcare environment.
As a growing number of radiologists face rising costs and reduced payments, billing errors, obsolete technology, business communication problems, recruitment challenges– they are left with little time to focus on their practice and are proactively turning towards MBC to combat declining reimbursements and concentrate on patient care.
Understanding & dealing with Radiology Billing Challenges in Ohio
“The conventional trade of radiology billing in Ohio is quickly changing and becoming increasingly challenging making it crucial for groups to embrace the use of technology and automation¨ stated Aman Gupta CEO at Med DataCare Pro.
The primary radiology challenges facing radiologists in Ohio include -
  • Declining reimbursements
  • Healthcare reforms
  • Conversion of conventional healthcare payment models
  • Increasing bad debt as a result of the weakening economic conditions
Impact of challenges & changes in radiology billing in Ohio include -
  • A statewide effort to reduce costs and increase efficiencies as the state witnesses a move to electronic claim transmission - an initiative taken by the Department of Jobs and Family which also governs Medicaid
  • An increasing trend of teleradiology picking up in Ohio
  • Increased numbers of emergency centers opting for outsourcing their radiology services
  • As radiology plays an ever increasing role in hospitals in terms of revenue; radiologists are opting for means to acquire optimized hospital revenue management services.
Ohio being a progressive state is taking these changes within their stride and hastening to find solutions. Aman Gupta believes that “most radiology practice and hospitals are looking to overcome increasing billing challenge by acquiring a specialized billing service in order to secure maximized revenues”.
Role of MBC in helping Radiologists in Ohio
Faced with these obstacles and uncertainties, there has been a high increase from both small and large radiology groups opting for radiology billing services in Ohio. Medical billers and coders have been able to successfully accommodate the large amounts of billing and coding volumes in the past few months. Additionally providing revenue cycle management, denial management, interaction with payers, HIPAA compliance for hospital based radiology departments MBC has successfully managed to cut costs, free up time and resources for various hospital radiology departments.
Inviting radiology practices to acquire MBC’s radiology billing to get access to-
  • Medical billers and coders who are regularly updated with latest radiology billing trends
  • Strong clientele-base and voluminous operations which help in offering highly competitive professional rates
  • Physician credentialing with both commercial and public payers
  • Commitment to quality and reliability with pre-qualifications such as certification by the American Association of Professional Coders (AAPC); and expertise at applying standard CPT, HCPCS procedure and supply codes, and ICD-9-CM diagnosis codes

The biggest advantage we offer to radiology practices in Ohio is our long standing presence across all major cities like Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Toledo and Akron. In tandem to the above benefits radiologists can utilize Medicalbillersandcoders.com services known for its affordability and efficient reimbursement of Radiology Billing.

Wednesday 24 July 2013

Medical Billing Partner: A Strategic Avenue for Achieving Revenue Integrity?

Healthcare providers in the current environment are aware of the fact that every step counts, leaving no room for errors as far as securing the revenues and reimbursements are concerned for their services. However, as the procedure of patient billing information has been traditionally managed by different departments in isolation, showing little integration the deficiencies of one department might impact the other department adversely, and even damage the revenue cycle of the healthcare provider, hence providers are now in need of a strategic avenue to procure the right revenue for their clinic.

Processes like medical billing, collections and denials managements are some of the prime activities handled by the health care providers, which play a significant part in ensuring revenue optimisation. However payment accuracy, resolving cases of denials and managing the underpayments are specifically critical in order to maintain the healthy bottom line. Additionally healthcare reforms like – Electronic Health Recording (EMR) mandatory for securing incentives under ARRA, transition to HIPAA and ICD-9 to ICD- 10, though improving quality of care are also slowing down the Revenue cycle. All in all physicians have very little option but to re –organize their clinics entire billing process.

Medical billing partners being specialists in their field provide a practical and optimum choice for improving the revenue cycle, streamlining medical billing functions, ensuring optimal reimbursements, operational efficiency and compliance, thus helping the physicians and health care providers to achieve revenue integrity. Billing partners regularly check for any coding errors adding any modifiers if necessary thus negating any chance of discrepancy in the billing process. Problems like denials and underpayment can also be dealt with on the same platform, as billers assist in helping streamline changes to the clinic due to health care reforms providing experts who are well versed with ICD-10, HIPAA & knowledge about the EMR software suitable for your clinic.

RCM of a health care provider being quite complex, involves various processes and people, ranging from scheduling the patient to billing for the services and collection. MBC through it medical billing service has been helping physicians who are at a constant risk of losing considerable amount of revenue where lack of communication between various departments and inefficiency are common features. Medicalbillersandcoders.com has been involved in revenue maximization for healthcare organizations by billing and coding for over a decade now for physicians across the 50 US States and across varied specialties.

Our team is constantly training and updating themselves about industry requisites also providing consultancy right from the best EHR– to data analytics. At MBC our medical billing and coding experts are constantly striving to update themselves to achieve the right revenue for your organization.

New York Physicians’ Monthly Collection Enhanced by 32% in the First Month by Medical Billing Services of Medicalbillersandcoders.com!

MBC by applying innovative medical billing solutions has successfully helped individual physicians, physician groups and hospitals across the State of New York - with its specialized team of billers and coders managing to enhance most of their physician’s monthly collections by 32% within the first month itself of taking up the account.
Recognizing New York Practitioner’s billing needs
Though the Medical billing requirements coincide in a certain way or another, each State’s billing needs are unique in their own way and MBC’s team endeavors to ascertain these State specific needs of all our clients. New York Physicians and especially Cardiologists find it tedious to balance patient care and admin needs mainly due to the large number of patients they need to cater to amidst time constraints.
MBC’s billing experts are aware about this crucial factor and New York practitioner’s requirement for both timely posting and follow up of claims to help maximize revenues. Additionally the health care reforms are likely to have considerable amount of impact on the New York’s Medical billing and hence physician’s revenue, for which the NY’s medical practitioners need to constantly update themselves.
Health Care Reform: will affect New Yorkers differently than other states
With the Federal health care reform there are to be changes to public and private health coverage in New York, including increased integration. Additionally advances in technology are likely to facilitate improved coverage and help streamline processes.
However with a number of prime consumer health insurance protections already in place in New York State it is likely to go through less transition than many states with respect to these reforms, never theless the number of insured will increase and MBC’s team is prepared to handle this situation for its clients and prevent them from struggling to balance these changes with patient care.
How we manage to collect more for you?
Running a medical practice in New York and maintaining an efficient medical billing department can be quite challenging. Generally denials can run up to 30% or more of a practice's billing; however MBC works towards a much lower denial rate and higher collection rate - with the principal of getting paid only when our clients get paid.
By and large the last 20-30% charges are not paid on first submission- requiring up to 10 times more effort to resolve, most practices or billings services have limited resources to do this work. MBC due to its large set-up can routinely and consistently apply collection efforts to these claims to generate higher and more consistent collections.
Guiding New York physicians towards better medical billing practices
MBC has been helping providers with all their medical billing needs located throughout New York, in major cities such as New York City, Rochester, Buffalo, Syracuse and Albany. MBC experts constantly update themselves about the health insurance systems, managed care systems, medico-legal and ethical responsibilities, confidentiality, drugs, and prescription records along with other industry changes – with an aim to achieve higher collections.
Get more information: New York City Medical Billing, Rochester Medical Billing, Buffalo Medical Billing, Syracuse Medical Billing, and Albany Medical Billing
Keeping in mind the large number of patients their New York practitioners attend to everyday Medicalbillerandcoders.com have been working diligently and also have a dedicated department for our providers based solely in New York. Providing comprehensive medical billing and practice management services for over a decade; our professional billers know the ins and outs of medical billing practices, regularly updating themselves about the changing procedures and legislation that affect New York providers.

MBC invites all providers across New York to access our services depending on their needs – of professionals to handle the practice’s entire billing process or during a temporary staff shortage. Our well-informed billers are constantly applying new methods and trends are available to help you enhance your collections.

Tuesday 23 July 2013

MBC Helps Cardiologists tackle changes in Medicare rates and other cardiology billing challenges

Since the release of final 2013 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule by CMS on 1st Nov. 2012, Medicalbillersandcoders.com has seen a rush of cardiology centers from various states of the US to outsource their cardiology billing and coding operations or show eagerness to improve their in-house revenue management system.

Identifying cardiology billing challenges

A look at the Medicare rate changes wrought by CMS explains this panic rush to billing and coding safety by cardiology centers. The new fee proposal discourages administration of multiple cardiology procedures to a patient in a day so that if a patient is provided with more than one cardiology service in a day, the technical component of the less expensive service will be reduced by 25 percent. CMS has kept diagnostic and therapeutic cardiology services in this reductive ambit and left out several other service types. The challenge it gives billers and coders is that they have to be able to separate therapeutic and diagnostic cardiology procedures from other ones and assign appropriate codes.
This may not sound difficult to an uninitiated person; but being a complex treatment with overlapping procedures, cardiology has never been an easy line of treatment to translate into foolproof insurance claims. This problem which will become more biting now given that a biller and coder has to combine a nuanced knowledge of cardiology procedures with sound knowledge of billing and coding, failing which may result in submission of inaccurate claims leading to shrinkage of revenue returns.

MBC’s role in helping Cardiologists
Although the billing and coding challenge facing US cardiologists are the same, MBC understands that the solution to it varies from one cardiology center to another depending on organizational size and operational needs. And MBC’s service modules are flexible enough to fit all of them- whether you require outsourcing of your entire billing needs or only require consultancy services.

As part of our Revenue Cycle Consulting services, MBC does a thorough assessment of your operations and work out areas of operational lapses and revenue leakages. This will involve identifying training needs of your billing and coding staff and where necessary training them, replacing your old bumbling software applications with new ones and spotting areas of revenue leakage.

On the other hand, with MBC’s outsourcing services, many medium-sized care providers have also been able to optimize their resource utility by directing internal staff to core healthcare activities, improve their control over operating costs and have seamless claim realization.
For More Information: Cardiology Medical Billing
MBC’s services have helped cardiology centers to overcome following cardiology billing challenges:

  • Complex codes: MBC’s coders have sound knowledge of CPT and ICD codes combined with an in-depth knowledge of interventional cardiology coding, cardiac catheterization laboratory coding, electrophysiology coding and cardiac computerized tomography angiography (CCTA) coding.

  • Adherence to HIPAA and ARRA: MBC’s coders are very familiar with these norms and ensure strict adherence to them maintaining complete confidentiality and privacy where required.

  • Over or under coding: The over-and-under-billing syndrome is very common in cardiology billing. MBC’s coders are conversant enough with cardiology procedures so as to assign appropriate cardiology codes regardless of intricacies of cardiology procedures.About Medicalbillersandcoders.com Medicalbillersandcoders.com is the largest 'Consortium of Medical Billers and Coders,' across the US. The portal brings together hundreds of billers, with experience in different specialties, on the same platform to service physicians in their local areas. This network of coders and billers is growing rapidly and is currently servicing over 50 specialty physicians, across the US ( New York Medical Billing, Houston Medical Billing, Chicago Medical Billing, Washington Medical Billing, Atlanta Medical Billing, Dallas Medical Billing, Las Vegas Medical Billing, Los Angeles Medical Billing, Miami Medical Billing, Phoenix Medical Billing, San Diego Medical Billing ) with the most prominent being Cardiology Medical Billing and General Practice.