Electronic Medical Billing - How Does It Help?

Posted by glennamor
1
Jul 3, 2010
794 Views
Have you ever given any thought to just how a doctors office manages to get their payments for the services they provide to their patients? Medical billing is the process in which this is taken care of. Both medical billing and coding are two separate things yet they work together in order to process insurance claims effectively. Coding is the process in which the services a patient receives are converted to medical code format for claim submission while billing is when the documents are gathered and submitted so payment can be received. Electronic medical billing has now become the most common practice for this entire process.


Paper billing, at one point, was the preferred method of handling insurance claims but the process took up a lot of time and was slow. Rates of rejection were extremely high largely due to small human errors on the reports and it required several people dedicated to nothing but this to keep billing under control. This translated to a lot of money being spent on staffing alone in order for their to be enough people to get the job done.


With the development of medical technologies, however, the process has become much more streamlined. Rooms full of files for just this purpose are no longer needed because all of the files can be saved on computers. This minimized space allows for more area of the medical facility to be dedicated to patient care itself.


Electronic medical billing software has revolutionized the whole process. Months of waiting for payments are over because the information can now be entered as quickly as the patient signs in. The claims process is able to start immediately and payout times have been cut significantly because the rate of error is now much lower.


A fast turn around on payments allows facilities to provide better care to their patients and to take care of a larger number of them thanks to the reduction of operation cost and payment processing. Open patient accounts can be monitored easily and payments can be tracked to ensure they are received so the facility doesn't lose money.


Software like this also eliminated the need for a lot of office employees so operation costs are significantly reduced as well. Only a few people are now needed to take care of the whole process from start to finish and do so with low rates of error involved.


In essence there are only two different varieties of medical billing software. There is a client server and then there is an application service provider. The client server is installed on a computer system within the facility itself but the application service provider is found installed on a third party vendor's computer system.


Either choice of software will have it's good and bad aspects but the decision as to which one is best will depend upon specific factors of the specific facility. Both work effectively and efficiently at reducing turnaround times in the claims process which means the facility can focus more on patient care and be much more productive in that aspect.

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