Family Physicians: Medical Billing Challenges in Family Practice

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Medical Billing Challenges in Family Practice

Family Medicine forms a crucial point of entry in the health care system, and the need as well as the shortage of family physicians in the United States is becoming a growing concern. Other specialties such as radiology, neurosurgery, and dermatology are more attractive due to the higher amount of compensation provided to physicians in these areas. Moreover, the looming Medicare cuts that have been postponed for a long time and are now extended to January 1, 2012, present another problem for family practitioners in avoiding losses in income. Family medicine and family physicians play a vital role in the healthcare system of a country.

Another important factor is the health reforms coupled with an increasing number of aging baby boomers in the coming years which would keep family physicians busier than before and hard-pressed for time and money.

Chronic Hurdles

Medicare is facing problems because of Federal fiscal troubles and Medicare cuts have been proposed in order to compensate for the rising health care costs. The recent debt ceiling increase at the eleventh hour by the government bears witness to the fact that Medicare is unable to withstand the increasing pressure brought on by a large number of the aging population in the country. The inevitable solution to this income crisis faced by family physicians and in the field of primary medicine is better payer performance and adherence to the guidelines in regard to administrative or other processes involved in the revenue cycle management. These chronic pressures on the revenue of family physicians can be relieved by ensuring the reduction of errors in the billing and coding procedures which are becoming more complex and extended in nature. Professionals who can perform better payer interaction and medical coding and billing can bring about speedy and fair reimbursement compared to inexperienced or overworked in-house staff.

The Geriatric Paradox

The increasing number of baby boomers and elder people indicates better life expectancy but also makes physicians, hospitals, and clinics dealing with chronic illnesses associated with old age busier by the day. Moreover, the Medicare fiscal issues exacerbate the problem by proposing to provide easy access to insurance for the elderly but lesser payments for physicians. As the baby boomer population grows, the number of physician-patient encounters by the elderly would also increase drastically, leaving very less or no time for physicians to handle paperwork or administrative tasks. Outsourcing the whole process of billing, coding, and payer interaction can be an easy and frugal solution to relieve the administrative burden faced by physicians and healthcare providers.