Medical Billing - The 13 Core Steps to Avoid Nightmares

I found this step-by-step guide published at www.MedicalBillingandCoding.net
I thought it useful to refer to as a means of staying on track to avoid falling away from general duties of a professional, full time medical biller.

See if you agree;

13 Steps Work Flow Chart:

1. Enter your patient information, adding new insurance carriers to your database as you go.
2. Enter the referral source or referring physician as well as any other information you've agreed to track for your clients.
3. Enter CPT and ICD-9 codes from the superbills and day sheets. Your software will automatically fill in the amounts charged for each procedure. Enter each charge on a separate line.
4. Transmit electronic claims directly to insurance carriers or to the clearinghouse.
5. Receive the audit report, review and correct errors on it.
6. Forward clean claims and resubmit rejected claims.
7. Print any paper claims.
8. Separate claims into your copy and the insurer's, fold and insert in envelopes.
9. Weigh envelopes that contain more than five claims to make sure you have sufficient postage.
10. Post payments to each patient's account. Most software programs include features that show which charges have been paid, how much is left on each charge and which charges are still unpaid.
11. Print aging reports so you can review each patient's account to determine which ones haven't been paid in a timely manner. Most software packages will do this for you.
12. Call insurance carriers to check on the status of delinquent claims. Most of your follow-up calls will be for paper claims.
13. Put your feet up and relax. You've earned a breather