Podiatry Billing: Top 5 Pain-points of Physicians
Podiatry is a medical specialty that works on the diagnosis and treatment of the human ankles and feet. The cost of the services offered by podiatrists is paid by the insurance companies, patients, or both.
The most challenging aspect of Podiatry billing for physicians. Many physicians who work for independently owned clinics and those with small staff have difficulty managing billing. There are many aspects to the billing process in podiatry that are complicated, from determining and proving the need for a treatment to coding nuances. Furthermore, podiatric practices treat primarily the elderly, necessitating additional billing & coding efforts, since Medicare covers those patients.
Below are some of the most common billing challenges in podiatry practices:
- The frequent changing rules
The billing as well as coding rules keep on changing and for inexperienced billing staff, it is different to remain updated with all the changes and adapt to changes. They need to be trained frequently to ensure clean claims are sent to payers for reimbursement so there is no delay in the payments. Also, there is a lot of compliance and audits that happen in podiatry billing, you have to ensure that all new compliances are met.
- Different medical billing rules with a different insurer
Not only you have to ensure changing rules are met, but you also have to have a system in place which can cope up with different claim procedure different insurer follows. To ensure all the claims are getting approved on time, you have to ensure they meet the guidelines of the insurer and there are no errors in your claims.
- Missing out on revenue
If you want to collect money from the payer, you have to ensure you are submitting clean claims. If there are any denials or rejections, you have to start an immediate follow-up. The window for this follow-up is small and requires the team to be well versed with rules and regulations. If the podiatry billing team is understaffed or inexperienced, they may miss the deadlines or not respond to denials. In such cases you will have to bill the patient to make the complete payment or write-off the amount as a bad debt which is harmful to your practice.
- Collection of money
Wherever applicable, your billing staff has to ensure the customers pay their co-pays for insurance-covered visits upfront. In most cases, the billing team does not take the payment upfront and wait for the patient to get discharged or even worse they assume they can collect the due amount post-discharge. Collecting small amounts after the patient has left costs you a lot of time and effort - following up, reissuing bills, etc. Even the chances of collecting the money after the patient has left are reduced.
- Cross-checking between the claimed filed and reimbursements received
This is one of the important things to do in Podiatry Medical Billing and if you don't do it in time, you will have to incur huge losses. You have to regularly monitor the claims that are going from your end and if the reimbursement is coming on time. If they are not, you will have to take the required action.
Conclusion
Managing a podiatry practice isn’t an easy undertaking. Whether it’s the day-to-day stresses of keeping your business running smoothly or integrating new marketing strategies into your current operations, there’s always too much here. However, you cannot afford to overlook billing as one of the essential aspects of your business. It is mandatory for podiatry medical billing to use the technology and upgrade their billing expertise to ensure no claims are denied or underpaid. If they lack time and focus on the medical billing service, they can look to outsource their podiatry billing services. 24/7 Medical Billing Services is one such billing service provider that can help you manage end-to-end podiatric billing processes. For more details, call us at +1-888-502-0537.
Read More: Dealing With Podiatry In Better Ways For Financial Increment
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