Avoid These Common Coding Mistakes in Your Family Practice with a Medical Billing Partner

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Operating costs were listed as the top concern for medical practices in 2013; however, billing and payment hurdles also kept physicians on their toes. Family practitioners also raced to keep up with changes in CPT codes which proved extremely challenging, especially for providers with weak profit margins. The majority of revenue for a typical family practice comes from the submission of ICD-9 and CPT codes to third-party payers. Therefore, it becomes essential to code accurately for every single service to receive timely payments during family practice billing.

Coders while carrying out family practice billing need to have a firm grasp on standard primary care coding because, unlike other specialties, family practices keep facing a variety of patient problems.

Time is required to study the CPT manual and documentation guidelines for accurate coding for error-free practice billing. An updated CPT manual will have to be ordered every year to make providers and coders aware of new, revised, and deleted codes.

Common Coding Mistakes That Can Cost Your Family Practice:

Here are a few medical coding and billing procedures that coders should not avoid at any cost to ensure accuracy in claim submission during practice billing:

• Encounter forms should be up-to-date or else your practice can lose various opportunities to obtain revenue. This task is time-consuming but extremely vital for error-free coding

• The medical necessity of services being offered by your practice should be substantiated as payers are becoming increasingly concerned about the same

• Physicians need to get involved with billers and coders in a selection of ICD-9 codes, codes valid for a visit, or services linking the codes to associated CPT codes

• Appropriate levels of E/M services should be selected and documented to ensure error-free coding

• Coders will have to learn the rules of using modifiers because they can be the difference between denials, full reimbursement, or reduced payments

• Charges should be captured for every offered service

How can you Achieve Error-Free Coding?

Family practice physicians can improve the revenue cycle management of their practice with correct CPT coding. Staying up-to-date with the coding changes related to family practice billing is a tedious task but it cannot be avoided if you want to prevent revenue loss and fraud and abuse concerns.