Richard Soper on Timely Payments for Physicians
Ever since I became a physician, I, Richard Soper, know very well that reimbursement for the health care system in the United States is very complicated. There are federal payers, state/federal payers, private for-profit insurance companies, non-profit insurers, and private insurance companies. The complexity comes with costs. Both hospitals and physicians are required to hire people just to process all those different payers. Recent studies show that payers more often reject the bills submitted to them by the physicians’ offices. Just like medical coding, medical billing seems large and complicated. Eight steps, which include the following: patient registration, confirmation of the financial responsibility, patient check-in and check-out, checking for coding and billing compliance, preparing and transmitting claims, monitoring payer adjudication, generating patient statements o bills, and assigning patient payments and arranging collections, comprise this billing process. ...