Let me first start out off with, I am new to medical billing and I enjoy it, and I love this site!!!
I just started medical billing in our office and found a lot of problems. I was trying to figure out another resource I can have so I may get some feedback fr experience billers. I thought to my self, there has to be a forum about medical billing because it is universal and sometimes can be a pain, I was sure that a lot of people feel the way I do, wanting to find out how to do it right and just learning how to work around insurance.
kuddos to the people that started this web site!!!
my problem:
I'm new and have little guide to medical billing. I did however take a course that taught me the basics.
my doctor specializes in Developmental Optometry (not very popular) and has his own private practice. My doctor helps kids with vision problems, vision therapy services to kids that need it , some medical eye problems and routine vision. He has not had a real medical Biller.
So there are no guidelines of what codes to use for the services that we provide. and If we should bring patients back for the testing because he does routine vision exams and does the additional testing (which is often coded with and EM code (99), which we should not be doing . He also uses the same procedure codes for different services with different prices. My goal is to set a standard for our services and bill accordingly to benefit the patient and our office.
This is hard because I do not have alot of resources nor do i know anyone that bills for a developmental optometrist.
My question is are there such a procedure codes that can be used that will indicate that some of our services has no procedure code? and if so, how can we help patients get paid on it and how can we avoid insurance writing off our services.
2nd.accepting assignment vs not accepting assignment.
accepting assignment means that we are accepting insurance allowed amount. we do this when we are providers.
when we do not accept assignment does this mean that payment will go to patient if patient paid us privately?
Do we have to put the amount paid on the cms? Because i was told not to because it confuses the person looking at the cms.