4. Provide your medical billing team with your encounter notes.
Once you’ve finished your encounter notes, transform them into a proper medical script so that others can read them. If you use voice-to-text technologies to record your notes, you’ll need to transcribe them before forwarding them to your medical billing staff.
You probably won’t have time to handle this, so subcontract the task to your front-office personnel. You can also outsource this work to a medical transcribing service.
If you handle all of your billing in-house, your medical script will be sent to your front-office employees. You’ll normally send your script to the billing service if you outsource your medical billing. There are a few exceptions: In our evaluation of athena Collector, an outsourced billing provider, we discovered that you must maintain an in-house medical biller to whom you will send your encounter notes.
5. Create ICD-10 and CPT codes from your medical script.
Your medical scripts will eventually make their way to medical coders. These professionals convert your treatments, diagnoses, medications, and other pertinent data into standardized ICD-10 and CPT codes. Insurers then use these codes to swiftly determine whether they will reimburse your services based on the patient’s health plan. These codes, along with your charges and the patient’s demographic information, will eventually appear on a medical claim.
Some firms hire in-house coders to work on claims coding full-time. Others use third-party medical billing firms to handle their medical coding needs. This decision frequently necessitates a cost-benefit analysis. Medical billing and coding are time-consuming and error-prone, yet the percentage of your collections you will spend on outsourced billing can be substantial.
6. Include fees in your medical claims.
Although medical treatments are standardized through codes, payments are not. You must include your charges in your claims. For example, if you charge $300 for primary care appointments, you’ll include $300 in your claims alongside the CPT code for primary care visits.
If your patient is responsible for any portion of your services, you must include the amount the insurer will cover alongside your costs. Payers will know how much to remove from their reimbursements, and you will not be paid twice for the same job.
