Monday 15 September 2014

Medical Billing: An Introduction



The need for well-experienced professionals in the health and medical industry increases every single day.  The reason behind this is that the Healthcare industry is so large and it covers an extensive area of technological equipment and procedures.  In fact, the medical technology we have nowadays may become outdated in just a few years time.  The fast pace of advancement with medical procedures makes the need for a coding system to be created.  This is to ensure that each medical procedure, diagnosis, as well as complaint is recognized by health insurance companies to be added with regards to medical professional compensation.  


Medical billing is a process that covers different process within.  It involves the filling up and completion of medical forms like insurance cards, patient profile and information, encounter forms, diagnosis sheet, treatment and surgeries performed, and more.  All these are then collected and assessed to make sure that every necessary field is filled up accurately.  After every form is verified, it is then processed for payment.  Processing includes transferring all the collected data into an accounting software program.

  
Medical billers, just like other types of billing professionals, deal with a lot of paperwork as well as time-management to make sure every processing of payment is updated real-time.  They should posses the skill to understand health insurance, payment processing, and benefits to be able to explain it to patients and doctors especially when there are claims for errors.

  It is also up to their discretion to decide on whether to charge or waive any balance not covered by their insurance.  Their main goal, however, is to make sure that the attending physician as well as the medical facility is well compensated with regards to the services and procedures rendered on patients.  The accounting software program where all the data was entered provides regular reports about profits and losses.


The increase of medical facilities and professionals is also increasing the need for medical billers. In fact, due to this increase, more and more people are focusing on careers that have to do with medical billing.  They are trained to understand insurance and benefit enough to be able to explain them, bookkeeping duties, documentation, data-entry, and accounting.  After completing these to make them eligible to handle medical billing tasks, they are then employed in hospitals and clinics. Some even set up their own home-based medical billing business while still affiliated with certain medical facilities and private clinics.

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