Dedicators of the healthcare field, especially clinicians, share the following two desires:
- Save time to give time for meaningful work
- Improve revenue to strengthen the satisfaction that comes with that meaningful work
While there are multiple avenues to achieve this goal, one necessary step involves building your medical billing knowledge. Thus, we’ve broken down three approaches to help you get started:
1. Understand the Difference in Your Codes
Some ICD/CPT codes may cover the same medical complexity but offer different compensation. Billing for Transitional Care Medicine (CPT 99495), for instance, contains the same requirements as a typical office visit (CPT 99214) but the reimbursements depending on your CPT code is different.
2. Research the ICD/CPT requirements
Whenever in doubt, do your research. Advancing the Business of Healthcare (AAPC) offers an excellent knowledge resource that discuss the nuances and changes of medical billing and codes.
If you’re already a DocCharge partner, then be sure to utilize the Codemed feature in the DocCharge Portal. Codemed allows you to search all ICD/CPT and LCD codes along documents outlining the medical necessity requirements.
3. Consider Investing in a Physician Productivity and Communication Platform
Communicating directly with your billers and office managers seems like a no brainer. But without a clear communication system to immediately transfer pertinent coding information between your patient and your team, it’s amazing how easily this process can become convoluted with billing errors.
Allowing your billing team to directly view, evaluate, and process your codes saves you significant time, translating to upwards of $50,000 in errors alone. Thus investing in a platform that allows you to communicate and view your patients billing information in real time is essential.
If you’re interested in investing in a physician productivity platform, then, make sure you ask yourself these three questions.