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Friday, February 26, 2016

By Bird Elwinds


When you tell someone what they are up against in medical billing, it matters. Many people often ask themselves what their future will entail when it comes to billing. It is important to communicate with vendors and your staff to see if they are up to date on ICD-10. Many companies that fail to teach themselves this new coding structure will often fail in the billing process. It can take years to become an expert in this topic. It is never easy to look at these types of lessons. They are often complex to understand.

It is important to asses your home health agency. See if the transition will upgrade the billing process. Is this going to help speed up the billing process or slow it down? It is important to find out now because you don't want to wait 90 days for a check to come in the mail from the insurance companies.

Teach and train your staff by sending them to courses. Courses always help the medical billing process because people actually learn what it takes to be successful in coding. Coding today is a lot like a computer scientist trying to learn Java or C++. It is a whole new language in and of itself. Most people are having trouble with ICD-10 because they did not train for it beforehand. Interestingly, the world was warned about the upgraded system years before it actually got launched. However, most people had no idea about the drastic changes that would come forward because of it.

If you are a physician, it is probably best to outsource your coding at this point. If you choose to do it in house, then it is a good idea to hire someone that knows a lot about coding and billing. This is the only way to keep everything afloat in your life. Take each day as it comes to you and don't worry so much about things not going in a good direction. There is a format that seems to work well for you. From time to time, things begin to take off in new and positive directions.

Remember that GEM's (General Equivalence Mappings) have been developed by CDC and CMS. These are coding resources to help you to understand ICD-10. Make sure to look at the ICD-10 books to find out which code is accurate. Your accuracy will help you to understand how to code correctly. Insurance companies will also look at you and see that you know what you are doing. In return, you should get faster turnaround times with payment. Preparing for 5010/ICD-10 transition takes time and patience. You will never completely understand this system if you don't keep up with it. Software is a big topic as well. Upgrading your software appropriately takes time and lots of effort as well.




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