Medical Billing Blog: Section - Medical Coding
Archive of all Articles in the Medical Coding Section
This is the archive containing links to all articles written in the Medical Coding 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.
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 …
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 This old system has long been outdated for our growing knowledge of medicine and medical treatments.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 …
New HCPCS Medical Billing Tool
Your practice should know where to look for medical billing changes each year. When dealing with HCPCS consolidated billing, many billers become confused about what codes are excluded from this type of billing. Before allowing your staff members to do medical billing, be sure they know where to look for answers to their coding questions. The source to find consolidated HCPCS medical billing codes is no longer in the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ Skilled Nursing Facility Help File. Since September 25, 2005, CMS has tried to steer medical billing staff members away from this file. Now, however, it is more important to do so. A new website has …
Update Your Reporting Method To Medicare
Update Your Reporting Method To Medicare or Face Denials Times are changing when performing electronic medical billing to Medicare. Beginning on August 1, 2005, noncompliant electronic claims billed will be denied. These billed medical claims must be compliant with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). Currently there is a medical billing contingency plan in effect that does accept these noncompliant claims, but that will soon end. In order to ensure the most efficient payment possible, submitting compliant electronic claims is recommended. Otherwise, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will send the claim back to you unprocessed and with no payment. To get medically reimbursed for this billing, …
Ready for your Medicare Site Visit?
Securing a Medicare provider number is a priority for any new practice. Properly submitted electronic Medicare claims can turn to cash in 21 days and can help establish a predictable cash flow. Part of the approval process includes a site visit and presentation of “QID’s” such as #14120: DOCUMENTED BILLING PROCEDURES that states “Sound practice management provides for defined billing procedures and reference materials as a component of increased accuracy.” When you engage a billing and coding company make sure the support team you choose is familiar with all Medicare procedures including the all-important site visit and the information required and presented during the visit. A company that is familiar …
Doctor Disciplined – Told to Take Medical Billing Classes
In Texas, a Bastrop physician and an Austin doctor were among the over 60 physicians that were disciplined y the Texas Medical Board. are among the 64 doctors the Texas Medical Board recently disciplined. The Internalist that was disciplined, Dr. Rajeev Gupta, was disciplined because five patients were improperly billed and the radiology equipment was operated by a staff member that was unlicensed. Dr. Gupta was fined $1000 and required to take a course in medical billing. The attorney for Dr. Gupta stated, “We realize there were mistakes, and we’re taking steps to make sure there are no additional mistakes,” said Alex Fuller, an Austin lawyer representing Gupta. “It wasn’t …
Outsourcing a Dirty Word toYou?
The word “outsourcing” has become a dirty word for many physicians that have been burned by medical billing companies that either outsourced their claims to medical billing companies that use neither secure networks nor adhere to HIPAA regulation in order to maximize their profits; or the outsourcing company just turned out to not be reliable and it wound up costing the practice money to utilize their services. Don’t let a bad experience keep you from partnering with a legitimate medical billing company that can not only help you get your reimbursements faster but also realize great profits by maximizing every single medical billing claim that is filed to make sure …
