Medical Billing Blogs

Collecting from patients has become a growing challenge for ASCs in recent years. A growth replicated the continued rise in patient financial responsibility, even after insurance. As patients’ financial responsibility for healthcare costs has shifted, ambulatory surgery centres must commit more attention and resources to collect these higher amounts. In fact, they are making every effort to do so while keeping in mind the stress and struggle that some patients face in covering personal expenses. Regardless of the growing challenges that ambulatory surgery centres collections and their patients face, ASCs must make sure that they have practices in place to assist them in collecting what patients owe for their treatment. Let’s have a deep dive into strategies that can be followed to maximize the collections for your Ambulatory Surgery Centres (ASCs): Devise a defined collections policy It’s critical for ambulatory surgery centres to have a clear col...

  It’s the outpatient surgical services that are primarily provided by ASCs (Ambulatory Surgery Centers). Such services can be a part of big hospitals or operate as standalone surgical centers. Although Ambulatory Surgery Center (ASC) Billing claims seem to be alike regular medical claims, they are quite different in terms of filing. ASC billing claims are filed on the HCFA 1500 or 837P, whereas  UB-04 or 837I  is used to file the hospital outpatient surgical claims. ASC billing requires extra caution as even minor errors can result in massive claim denials. Here we discuss about ASC billing ensure accuracy in bills and smoothness of claim reimbursement. Let’s take a look at the different ways to improving Ambulatory Surgery Center Billing: Clarify the Collections Process Communication with patients must be open and transparent if  ASC medical claims billing efforts are to be more efficient. Make sure that new patients are aware of their financial respo...

  One of our Ambulatory Surgery Center clients has been open for approximately 10 years. The accounts receivables (A/R) had increased notably over the 2 years of the period — from almost $1.2 million to nearly $2.4 million, an increase of more than 100%. A/R days had increased from 35 to 85 days. There were more than 2,400 accounts outstanding. This is almost double of accounts any center could expect with the case volume. Some of the increase in outstanding accounts was due to issues with payers that switched to the modern EAPG i.e. Enhanced Ambulatory Patient Grouping (EAPG) System. When the first time this client approached us, we started by identifying the challenges faced by this center. Understanding ASC Billing Challenges With medical facilities around the world are advancing, the United States now has almost the same number of Ambulatory Surgical Centers as there are Hospitals. Although the number of outpatient surgeries is getting popular, physicians, coders, and i...

Your Ambulatory Surgical Center (ASC) will succeed with both patient satisfaction and a reliable & proper medical billing process. When your ASC is facing losses money because of mismanagement of the revenue cycle, your practice may face an unnecessary risk for more losses in revenue than what is earned, which may further cause extremely stressful conditions. Errors in medical billing are one of the concerns that may harm a private Ambulatory Surgery Center. Medical coding is changing all the time and without notice. Regulatory changes are constantly being updated and can change the way you handle the ASC medical billing process. Not being in line with these changes may cost you more. As per a Black Book survey, around 80% of hospital leaders are now thinking of outsourcing their revenue cycle management services. Some ASCs will still choose to manage their financial service in house, but there are so many advantages to outsourcing your medical billing and coding. Ambulatory surgic...

  Ambulatory surgical centers (ASCs)   are one of the fastest-growing medical services now. However, unlike physician-surgeon or hospital billing, there are great things that you as well as your billing authority need to know before filing a claim for services provided through an ASC. Medicare often has several guidelines than some payers, for one thing, and the payers themselves often vary regarding medical urgency, approved procedures, or other filing obligations. If you’re brand-new to ASC billing , understanding these few essential things about ASC billing and recording claims upfront will get you off to a more reliable start and increase your likelihood of more active, more comprehensive reimbursement. However, even expert billers find that due to the ever-changing nature of payers, and Medicare, particularly the difficulty of staying current on the most progressive changes, it can be intimidating without the support of third-party dues management services. Some basic ASC...