As a medical office administrator, you’ll be responsible for multiple duties that help a clinic run smoothly and keep patients satisfied. One of the most important medical office administration tasks you’ll need to complete on a daily basis is billing. This process is very important as it ensures that each clinic is properly reimbursed for the services offered whether that’s through the Ministry of Health, through insurance, or out of pocket. Medical billing involves: maneuvering a variety of codes, processing insurance claims, and managing invoices. Here are five helpful tips for mastering this crucial aspect of your job.
1. Bookmark the Provincial Schedule of Benefits to Avoid Setbacks
A common issue that comes up during billing is forgetting which fee code goes with what procedure. This is easy considering there are so many codes. Though fee codes differ from province to province, they are all listed in the provincial schedule of benefits which you should keep readily available. To save time, try highlighting codes that you use frequently to avoid any setbacks in billing.
2. Bill Daily to Avoid Getting Behind
While juggling the many tasks involved in medical office administration, it’s easy for non-urgent tasks like billing to fall to the wayside. When you fall behind on billing, your clinic may not get compensated on time which can present a serious problem if this becomes a recurring issue. After medical office admin training, it’s a great idea to make billing a part of your daily routine so that nothing piles up and your clinic gets paid on time.
At the same time, keep an eye on cut-off dates. In a medical billing context, cut-off dates refer to a deadline for submitting clinic claims in order to get paid on time. If medical billing claims aren’t submitted in a timely fashion, the claims may no longer be eligible for payment. This is a great example of why it’s so beneficial to do your billing daily. You won’t have to play catch up and your clinic won’t have to miss out on any funds.
3. Always Verify Patient Information After Medical Office Admin Training
Just like coding a procedure incorrectly, recording the wrong patient information can lead to claim rejections. This is a major inconvenience but it can easily be avoided by simply initiating a conversation with patients when they approach the front desk. For example, you can ask patients whether all their information is up to date. Addresses, for example, change often. You could make it a habit to ask your patients, “Are you still living at this address?” in order to avoid discrepancies in their files.
4. Have a Plan for Managing Rejected or Denied Claims
Even if you’re confident after completing your medical office administration course and you do everything in your power to avoid rejected claims, they will still happen from time to time. It’s good to have a system in place for handling them. Luckily, most of the time, the solution is very simple and all you’ll have to do is take note of the error, correct it, and resubmit the claim. However, dealing with denied claims may require you to send in an appeal, as sometimes the reason for the denial is not always clear. Through our medical office administration program, you’ll be introduced to the ins and outs of medical billing and all the other aspects of this dynamic career.
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