Medical Billing Blog with Medical Billing & Coding Info & Articles
Our blog contains news and articles relating to numerous healthcare sectors including revenue cycle management, medical billing, medical coding, ICD, HIPAA, practice management functions and more.
Is Your Staff Disaster Code Ready?
Hurricane season 2007 won’t be starting up again until June, however with the appearance of El Nino, a natural phenomenon that brings warmer currents to the oceans, a larger number of hurricanes is slated to develop along with more severe storms across the United States. With bad weather, unfortunately comes disasters and catastrophes, make sure if you live in a highly likely area to experience severe flooding, tornados or hurricanes that you educate your staff on using the correct codes for these special types of claims. CPT added two codes to reflect disaster related coding (DR) and catastrophe/disaster related (CR). DR is the top-level code and CR is the modifier …
Get Up To Date On Your Q Modifiers for Foot Care
More Q Modifiers were updated recently, make sure that your staff is up to date on the currently preferred to be reported when the physician is performing foot care. Modifiers Q7 (One class A finding), Q8 (Two class B findings) or Q9 (One class B and two class C findings) tell insurers why your physician is performing foot care. To determine which modifier applies to your physician’s claim, check out the following list of what Medicare and other payers include in each description: Class A Finding:Nontraumatic amputation of foot or integral skeletal portion thereof Class B Findings:Absent posterior tibial pulseAdvanced trophic changes such as (three of the following sub-categories qualify …
Understanding HIPAA Requirements for E-Security
If you haven’t taken the time to evaluate your data; both the data that you actively send as well as the data at rest. If you don’t you could be in violation of the new HIPAA violations. Recently, HIPAA made a final security rule and while the final ruling does not mandate that you encrypt all of your email transmission but it does require that you examine how all of your data is transferred on an overall scale. There are two key items that will help you evaluate how your data is transmitted. (1)integrity controls and (2)encryption. Integrity control sounds a little confusing, but it really just means proper access …
Coding a Follow-Up Visit that Turns Into a Counseling Session
Patients don’t always stick to the sole reason for their medical visit. Especially pediatric visits. A good scenario that is not too uncommon is when a mother brings in her son for a follow up visit to determine if his ear infection (otitis media) has subsided with the antibiotic regiment that was prescribed. However during the recheck she has questions about some behavior she is seeing in her son that leads her to believe he may be ADD (attention deficit disorder) and the physician has a counseling session with her that discusses options and risks involved, possibility of medications and other forms of treatment that takes about 25 minutes. The …
Getting Rid of Hard Copies
A question that comes up periodically is how should a medical practice dispose of the hard copies of files? The answer isn’t rocket science, shredding is the only good answer. When you are ready to dispose of hard copies medical files, anything with a patient’s name on it should be shredded.If you don’t have the staff available you don’t want to invest in an industrial-sized shredder, a good alternative would be to hire an outside shredding service that will either come to your offices and shred on site; or pick up your files, lock and store them in sealed containers and put them on a closed end truck that is …
AMA Revises Code 54150
There are some new guidelines for reporting a nerve block with a circumcision. In the past you may have reported this as two separate procedures using 54150 to document the circumcision and 64450 for the accompanying nerve block. However the AMA has revised code 54150 (Circumcision, using clamp or other device with regional dorsal penile or ring block) in the new edition of CPT 2007 to include the accompanying nerve block in the description of the service. As such, it would now be unnecessary to report 64450 (Injection, anesthetic agent; other peripheral nerve or branch) with 54150 for this purpose, and the National Correct Coding Initiative (NCCI) bundles 64450 into …
Correct Use of Modifier 51
The multiple procedure code Modifier 51, causes some confusion among medical billing professionals because it relates to multiple procedures performed but what many medical coders miss is the fact it only applies to multiple procedures performed by physicians and imaging centers. Using this modifier can get your claim denied and cause a large delay in receiving reimbursements. Carriers already assume during a hospital stay that multiple procedures will already be performed therefore designation of the exact nature and type of services rendered by the attending physician will still suffice for hospital medical billing claims. The CPT manual designates modifier 51 (Multiple procedures) exempt codes with a “circle with a slash” …
Medical Coding – Stop the Paper Chase!
If your staff complains they don’t have time to do their jobs because they are keeping up with the fast paced changes in your medical coding, it might be time to consider outsourcing. Correct coding is critical for your medical billing claims to be processed accurately. If you aren’t turning in accurately coded medical billing claims, you could be costing your practice up to one-fourth of your revenue. We offer medical coding services that can be included as a bundled package with your medical billing services or if you only need coding, you can opt to only have us process your medical coding. It is imperative that your medical coding …
New to Medical Billing?
Understanding the basics of medical billing will make it easier to process claims and do your coding correctly, even if you don’t work in the industry full time or you are new to working in a practice. You will hear two terms over and over. ICD-9 and CPT. These are the two coding systems that are used to process medical billing forms. The first acronym is the one that identifies the type of disease or physical state of the patient being treated. Those are the ICD-9 codes which stands for International Classification of Diseases, 9th Revision, Clinical Modification, or shortened ICD-9-CM, codes) and another that describes the procedures, services or …
Eliminate Confusion Over 99053 and 99058 in Billing
There were two new codes issued in 2006 that continue to confuse many medical billers. These two codes were created to specifically address the after-hours and red-eye services for procedures done by physicians outside the normal hours. Previously when compiling the medical coding for medical billing, a coder would have used 99050 as a “catch-all” coding. Now CPT has revised the original code and added new codes. 99053 is “for services between 10 p.m. and 8 a.m. in 24-hour facilities,” and will be used by both physicians on call and hospitals. Please note that code 99053’s wording to include “24-hour facility” will put a new limitation on using late night …
