From: Gwen Hanson <gs

From: Gwen Hanson <gs_hanson@yahoo.com>
Sender: Practiceimprovement1@yahoogroups.com
Mailing-List: list Practiceimprovement1@yahoogroups.com; contact Practiceimprovement1-owner@yahoogroups.com
Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2005 21:41:27 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Re: [Practiceimprovement1] Measuring billing success
Reply-To: Practiceimprovement1@yahoogroups.com

Scott,

I sat back and relaxed while amazing billing 6% "did"
my billing from 12/1/04 to April 05. I then realized
that they failed to bill probably 50% of visits
successfully. In April, I created a spreadsheet that
contained each patient visit since day 1 with current
status, name, dob, insurance, id#, amnt billed. I then
identified all the unpaid claims. By then, I requested
a dedicated person to help me catch up through April
30th. I would identify dates of service that needed
billed and she'd sometimes resubmit the claims. During
that time, I learned to submit claims with EZ Claim
which was not too hard. Lynn Ho (from our list serve)
helped me a lot.

May 1st, I began to mail in my own claims. Within a
week, I noted amazing turn around times (compared to
what I was used to). Now, I've been doing my own
billing for 2 months and things are improving although
the old stuff still drags me down a little since it's
STILL not completely finished.

I plan to submit electronically beginning this week.
I'm hoping it'll make me more efficient by cutting out
the envelopes and stamps but I'm not too confident. EZ
Claim cost is low for mail-in submission but expensive
when you add the electronic submission module. EZ
Claim tech support is worth the cost.

The billing takes a LOT of my time so far. I'm hoping
it improves. Processing the EOBs, especially the "bad"
EOBstakes most of the time. Submitting the claims is
relatively quick. I'm afraid I'm about 50/50
patient/admin time, possibly worse. (Admin includes
giving lab results, answering phone messages etc etc)

Gwen