Medical Billing Blog: Section - Medical Billing
Archive of all Articles in the Medical Billing Section
This is the archive containing links to all articles written in the Medical Billing section of our blog.
Click any of the article links below to read the entire article or browse another section to the right to read articles on another subject.
ICD-10 for Substance Abuse & Mental Health Providers
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) has published a new fact sheet designed to help mental health and substance abuse service providers make the transition to the new International Classification of Diseases, 10th Edition (ICD-10) code sets. ICD-10 will affect all diagnosis and inpatient procedure coding for everyone involved in mental health and substance abuse healthcare under HIPAA. However the change to ICD-10 does not affect CPT coding for outpatient procedures. All services provided for either substance use or mental disorders are subject to HIPAA standards; therefore, all mental health and substance abuse providers must shift to ICD-10 once it becomes effective on October 1st. SAMHSA’s new …
ICD-10: Know ICD-9 And ICD-10 Differences Beforehand!
ICD-10 deadline is looming. The fear of October 2014 has sent the healthcare industry in a tizzy with many fearing for its accurate compliance. The haphazard preparation of the diagnostic codes is a disaster waiting to happen. Before chalking out the ICD-10 action plan for your practice and to ensure a smooth transition from ICD-9 to ICD-10, it would be wise for you to know the most crucial differences between ICD-9 and ICD-10. Lack of Specifics ICD-9 has been marred by a glaring lack of specification, for instance, the same injuries on opposite limbs comprise the same code. This leads to complexity and gives room for confusion on different levels. …
Windows XP Will Not Be HIPAA Compliant in April 2014
If you are still using Windows XP machines, you need to be getting rid of them soon. As Mike points out over at Hitech Answers, April 8th is when Microsoft ends all security updates, which puts you in direct violation with HIPAA. “Time’s up. On April 8, 2014, Microsoft is ending security updates and patches for Windows XP and Office 2003. Just having a Windows XP computer on your network will be an automatic HIPAA violation, which makes you non-compliant with Meaningful Use and will be a time bomb that could easily cause a reportable and expensive breach of protected patient information. HIPAA fines and loss of Meaningful Use money …
ICD-10, Be Financially Prepared Before October 2014
As a follow-up to my ICD-10 article yesterday, I thought it was definitely worth mentioning this article by Matt Dallmann over at Physicians Practice. My article focused mainly on the sheer number of codes and how I felt that would affect providers in their daily operations. In his article today, Matt discusses the potential, or actually, the likelihood for a delay in reimbursements as this transition takes place. As quoted below, he mentions that it will likely cause computer glitches, etc., causing delays and a headache for many providers. “There are a number of issues you should look out for, ranging from systemic changes to computer glitches. The expansion of …
A New Year Brings a New Code Set – ICD-10 in 271 Days
It’s the year of ICD-10. In a short 271 days we will be making the change from ICD-9 to ICD-10. There is a ton of great information available on making the transition in October, but in speaking with clients and colleagues, I see an impact that will take providers some time to get used to. A very notable change of ICD-10 that I feel will have the most impact is the sheer number of codes providers will be dealing with on a daily basis. ICD-10 Diagnosis Codes: As we all know, we will be transitioning to ICD-10 in October (as of right now anyway), and this is a huge change …
Ready for October 2014? ICD-10 Resources to Help You.
It’s been a long time coming, but I am happy to say that we finally got our new website going this week. As a part of our Provider Resource Center we have compiled a list of ICD-10 resources to assists providers in their preparation for Oct. 2014. The ICD-10 resource list contains links from CMS, AMA and WHO, as well as many other national and regional organizations. We have about 310 days till ICD-10 takes full affect and I am going to bet that very few healthcare professionals are ready. If you haven’t, you should start preparing, check out this list and hopefully it will assist you in better understanding …
Pediatric Patient History – Who Can Take It?
Contrary to popular belief, it is safe practice to allow any office member to take the review of systems and the family social history. These two evaluation and management history elements can actually be taken by absolutely anyone. It is ok in medical billing for a parent or a secretary to take down this information as long as the information is reviewed and signed off on by the acting pediatrician. The only part of an evaluation and management visit that the physician or nurse practitioner must complete for medical billing purposes is the history of present illness or the reason for the visit. By allowing your administrative staff to complete …
What ICD-10-CM Promises
What ICD-10-CM Promises The 30 year old medical billing ICD-9 coding system will soon be thrown out the window. This old system has long been outdated for our growing knowledge of medicine and medical treatments. We now know a lot more about diseases then we did thirty years ago. We also have discovered many new conditions and variations of old conditions. The new ICD-10 medical billing system promises great change to the health field. Over one hundred modern countries now use the ICD-10 medical billing coding system. The United States currently uses the ICD-9 system. With the old ICD-9 system it is very difficult transferring information back and forth between …
Surefire Tips to Identify Wound Repair Level
Wound repair causes a lot of confusion among medical billers and medical coders. It’s not always easy to identify the level of wound repair involved when reading an operative report. If you cannot quickly ascertain the level of wound repair, then you need to check for a few things. In order to identify wound repair level, you should look to the operative report for these key words and clues: -If a surgeon mentions single layer closure in his or her operative report, it is a simple repair. Simple repairs involve superficial wounds that involve “primarily epidermis, or dermis or subcutaneous tissues without significant involvement of deeper structures” according to the …
Two Removals are Similar and Different
To avoid raised rejection of your medical billing claims for similar procedures that will be coded due to different removals or different parts of the body affected, you need to make sure you have iron-clad documentation. In some cases, you will come across two removals that are very similar, but different. For example, if a pediatrician removes an extra digit from a newborn’s hand, and also removes a skin tag from the newborn, the removal of an extra digit and the removal of a skin tag fall under the same CPT code but fall into different ICD-9 codes. For these two procedures, you should report 11200 (11200 is the removal …
