Boost Your Chiropractic Billing Collections

1
(No Transcript)
2
Boost Your Chiropractic Billing Collections
With Medicare and private payer insurance changes
and new requirements and regulations,
chiropractic medical billing has become quite
complex. Chiropractors need to revamp their
revenue cycle technologies and billing workflows
to submit clean claims, reduce denials, and get
reimbursed. We shared some Chiropractic Billing
Collections strategies that can streamline a
practices financial workflow and improve
revenue.   Chiropractic Billing Collections
Strategies   Educate Patients   According to a
Revenue Cycle Intelligence report, to improve the
patient financial experience, providers should
inform patients of their financial responsibility
before their office visit. Patients should
understand the costs involved with chiropractic
care, what their insurance covers, and what their
financial responsibilities could be. patients can
be given a flyer with a simple explanation of
billing basics. They can be directed to a
customer service number for issues that need
clarification. Make sure office staff knows how
to communicate with patients about billing
information.
3
Boost Your Chiropractic Billing Collections
Verify Insurance   Billing success begins at the
front desk. Insurance verification should be done
at each visit to understand what the patients
responsibility is. Payers offer different plans
with varying deductibles and co-pay options.
Getting insurance eligibility verification done
by a specialist before the office visit would
ensure that both the provider and the patient
know how much the patient is responsible for and
whats covered. Its important to check
eligibility for returning patients who have been
absent for a while. Recording accurate patient
data, including insurance information and
provider eligibility, is necessary for
error-free claims submission.   Collect Patient
Responsibility   Problems related to collecting
patient responsibility are often caused by a lack
of a clearly explained financial policy and/or
poor administration. Patients should sign a form
acknowledging that their insurance may not cover
all of their care. Many patients dont discover
the limitations of their policies until they show
up in your office. Identify the shortcomings of
your patients insurance coverage. If you dont,
patients are likely to blame you rather than
placing the responsibility on the insurance
carrier.
4
Boost Your Chiropractic Billing Collections
Chart Notes   The quality of your patient notes
can directly affect your chiropractic practice
collection. The first step to improve them is to
make sure your notes are legible. There is some
chiropractic software that includes intuitive
notes, charting, and guided documentation helping
you in reducing errors. It also takes away the
guesswork at deciphering handwriting. Secondly,
youll need to establish a chiropractic treatment
plan for each patient, and reflect evidence of
functional improvement within the chart notes.
Making sure your documentation is in compliance
will increase practice collection.    Accurate
Coding   Sometimes chiropractors intentionally
under code in order to avoid the penalties
associated with overcoding or unbundling. Others
leave the coding to their administrative staff,
which can be so confusing and complicated that it
results in an even higher rate of errors, and an
increased level of stress. It isnt easy to stay
current with coding, and this can result in
reduced reimbursement, or delayed and denied
claims. Documentation
5
Boost Your Chiropractic Billing Collections
Each patient encounter should be clearly
documented to prove that the service was actually
performed. The four major types of documentation
errors are no documentation, insufficient
documentation, lack of medical necessity, and
incorrect coding. The Department of Health and
Human Services Office of Inspector General (OIG)
found that improper payment rates attributed to
insufficient documentation rose from 39.5 to
92.2 in the last four years. Special attention
should be given to documentation to avoid these
errors.   It would be difficult to streamline
revenue cycle activities as well as taking care
of patient management. Some of the successful
chiropractic practices rely on medical billing
companies to handle their chiropractic medical
billing and coding. For more information on
chiropractic billing and coding, get in touch
with us!