How Inaccurate Coding Can Affect Your Practice & How to Fix It

HBS recognizes the critical role billing plays in running a profitable holistic practice. We also acknowledge the profound impact billing errors, rejected claims, and clunky processing can have on your revenue cycle. To help you avoid common billing errors, here are some best practices for the most accurate medical billing process possible.

How Inaccurate Coding Can Affect Your Practice

Medical billing errors can have a number of negative impacts on your holistic practice. The most obvious problem is the increased denial rates, which means your insurance reimbursements will decline as well. Given that many holistic practices operate on relatively small margins, even a slight uptick in claim denials could put your business at risk. 

In addition, there’s the extra time and resources spent on resolving the denied claim! A bill that’s initially rejected due to an error typically takes twice as much time to process, and the work required to follow up on it takes away from time that could be spent building up a practice or delivering better services to patients.

If medical billing and coding errors increase in frequency, the quality of the patient experience dwindles, profits are adversely affected, and the overall revenue cycle for your holistic practice is stymied. Efficiently adhering to the medical billing process and procedures can prevent these consequences through accurate claims management.

Top Medical Billing and Coding Errors in Holistic Medicine

Holistic Billing Services knows humans make mistakes; the goal is always to learn from them! Make your staff aware of these top billing errors so as to further mitigate the potential of these slowing down your holistic practice:

Scattered Claims Filing Practices

Accurate medical coding lies at the heart of efficient claims filing in billing processes. Delayed claims filing creates untimely billing practices, and is one of the most common medical billing mistakes. Deadlines are critical in the claims filing process as it essentially decides whether the claim will be accepted or rejected, and greatly affects your revenue cycle. To avoid such a situation, put effort into establishing an efficient system for billing and filing claims in your holistic practice.

Unorganized Data Collection

Another frequent point of failure in the billing process is inaccurate or insufficient data collection and usage. Mistakes can occur when patient information is not comprehensively collected or when clinical procedures are not filed in a timely and accurate manner. Improper medical billing can be drastically reduced when patient data is collected efficiently and used toward medical billing codes effectively. Capturing and utilizing complete data further minimizes the possibilities of duplicate claims, which can delay payment processing even more. Automated information filling, such as social security numbers and demographic codes, can speed up the medical billing process and procedures.

Failure to Verify Insurance

Insurance issues are among the top reasons for most claim denials and typically result from a routine oversight of not checking for changes in patient-provider information. Since insurance information can become outdated at any time, you must implement a verification step into the billing workflow for every single patient visit. By incorporating this double-check into your billing process and verifying the patient’s insurance at every visit, you’re confirming there are no policy-related issues that could result in denied claims.

Lack of Follow-Ups

When members of your medical billing team are not consistently following up on outstanding payments, your revenue cycle is adversely affected. Problematic claims remain unattended and thus negatively affect your holistic practice’s bottom line. Be sure to implement follow-up reminders for continuous monitoring of delayed payment claims to stay on top of revenue your practice has earned.

Best Practices to Avoid Medical Billing and Coding Errors

In addition to the general awareness of frequent medical billing errors, it’s essential to implement some of the following best practices to reduce the chance of complications in your holistic practice. Such tips include the following: 

Routine Evaluation of Medical Billing Services

Medical coding and billing services are complicated processes, so it’s important for your holistic practice to routinely analyze its strengths and weaknesses in this sector. This analysis can establish a pattern of errors and successes, which can further adjust or solidify your practice’s billing methods. Whether it is inaccurate coding, untimely bill generation, information gaps, or clinical issues, the source of medical billing errors is easily identifiable through periodic analysis instead of turning a blind eye.

Consistent Excellence in Medical Coders

Employing coders who are experienced, methodical, and detail-oriented lies at the key to a successful billing process, as common medical billing mistakes are often the result of medical coder slip-ups. Whether a claim faces success or failure, therefore, lies in the hands of the medical coder - your employees are your best assets for maintaining a streamlined holistic practice!

Keeping Up With Changing Trends

Reducing the rate of denied claims and medical billing errors means your holistic practice needs proficient medical billing management. This includes up-to-date medical credentialing and medical billing systems that are automatically updated to account for ever-evolving codes and rules.

Ensure Accurate Medical Billing With HBS!

Using these tips on avoiding medical billing errors, you’re sure to make the most of your practice’s revenue in the future. However, these tips definitely require time and effort to do it successfully. If you’re in need of expert medical billing services, let NCG Medical be your go-to source for an error-free billing solution.

With more than 40 years of experience dealing with a broad range of medical billing issues for all kinds of practices, the team at NCG Medical has seen just about every kind of medical billing error an organization can make. That’s why our clients trust us to help them manage their insurance claims to ensure they’ll be accepted as clean claims on the first attempt, avoiding lengthy back and forth negotiations with the insurance company. And best of all, you’ll avoid the scrutiny of federal and state auditors.

Contact us today to learn about NCG Medical’s medical insurance billing services and find out how we can help you accelerate your revenue cycle management.