3. The third top reason for doctors losing money is due to
sloppy bookkeeping. Yet
another reason to make sure you have not only experienced but loyal people
in charge of your billing. It is amazing how much money doctors lose due
to the negligence and inexperience of the people that they put in charge
of their money.
There are many ways that sloppy
bookkeeping can cause money loss. One is from claims just not being
submitted. The doctor does the work of seeing the patient, but never gets
paid because his staff doesnt submit the claim. Many doctors think that
this cant happen to them but in reality they just would never know if it
did.
Another example of sloppy bookkeeping
is incorrect patient information on file. If you dont have the correct
personal information or insurance information, the patients claim can be
denied. In many offices denials are not handled so if the claim isnt paid
the first time around, the doctor loses out.
4. The fourth
reason is due to lack of proper follow up. The sad truth is most
doctors offices do very little, if any, follow up. All unpaid claims
should be followed up on at least every 30 days. Just submitting the
claims to the insurance companies is not enough. For whatever reason, a
certain percentage of claims will go unpaid unless they are followed up
on. Many times claims are denied for improper reasons and a phone call
needs to be made to get the issue resolved. If these calls are not made,
the doctor does not get paid for their service. Proper and thorough follow
up is a necessity.
5. The fifth
reason for doctors losing money is employee theft. Doctors never
want to believe that someone on their staff would ever steal from them,
but unfortunately it happens in the majority of doctors offices. It is
great if you feel that you can trust everyone in your office, but it is
even better if you have systems in place that make theft nearly impossible
in the first place. Make everyone accountable for any money that passes
thru their hands.
6. The sixth top
reason for doctors losing money is due to under-coding, and/or coding
errors. It is important to have someone who understands all of the ins
and outs of coding. Doctors have to be careful when submitting claims to
insurance companies that they code everything accurately. It would not be
good to submit claims with codes that do not reflect the services actually
performed to the patient. But sometimes coders can be so concerned about
over coding, that they actually tend to under code EVERYTHING. This can
result in a huge dollar loss for the doctor.
A doctor also wants to make sure that
the coder understands which diagnoses apply to which procedures were
performed. Many insurance companies only cover certain procedures when
certain diagnosis codes are linked to them.
So, if you are a
doctor who thinks you need to be seeing more patients, you may want to consider
if any of these top six reasons doctors lose money listed above may apply to
your office. You may be able to raise your bottom line considerably
on the patients you are already seeing.
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