If you own a urology practice and are looking for ways to reduce expenses, one method is to hire a urology billing service instead of maintaining your own billers and coders on staff. Contracting eliminates paying benefits to staff and also eliminates the lengthy onboarding and training process if you need to hire new staff, so it can result in a drastic reduction in overhead for your practice. To help you find a billing and coding contractor that would be the best fit for your practice, read on to learn three things you should look for in a urology billing service.
1. Certified in Urogenital Coding
The American Academy of Professional Coders offers an examination to become a certified urology coder. It's a thorough examination that tests a coder's knowledge of urogenital anatomy along with the diagnoses and procedures used in urology. If you're outsourcing your practice's coding, you should look for a service that has certified urology coders on staff, as they'll be the best qualified to interpret your charts in order to maximize reimbursement from Medicare and private insurers.
2. Works With Numerous Other Urologists
You should also look for a service that works for many other urologists, especially if they also practice in your area. A knowledge of how much reimbursement other urologists are receiving on average allows the urology billing service to determine if you're getting the maximum possible reimbursement for your services without overbilling.
Staying close to the average will help you avoid audits, as Medicare and private insurers look for outliers when they're trying to determine which practices to audit — if you're getting much more reimbursements than is normal for a urologist in your area, you're more likely to be targeted. While an audit isn't a problem if you're keeping meticulous charts and not overbilling Medicare and insurance companies for your services, going through an audit is an annoyance that takes time away from your practice. It's most convenient to avoid being audited entirely.
3. Knows How to Bill for Unlisted Procedures
All specialists planning to outsource their medical billing department, including urologists, should find a billing service that knows how to work with unlisted procedure codes. Unlisted procedures haven't yet been assigned an official CPT code. They're usually either very new, rare, or experimental, and billing for unlisted procedures requires going through a special process where the coding staff needs to thoroughly document its name along with the exact steps performed during the procedure. Specialists are more likely to perform unlisted procedures because they're at the forefront of their fields, so it's important to find a medical billing service that knows how to properly code them.
Ultimately, the most important thing you'll need to look for in a urology billing service is familiarity with the field of urology — knowing what's normally charted by urologists in practice helps them bill faster and more accurately, which lets you save money by processing claims quicker and also maximizes the reimbursement you'll receive. If you're using in-house coding and billing or are unsatisfied with your current outsourced billing provider, look for a urology billing service and make sure that they fulfill the criteria above in order to find one that would best fit the needs of your practice.
Contact a company that offers urology billing services for more information.
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