Blog
Our News and updates
4 Tips to Achieving Successfully Negotiated Payer Contracts
Negotiation. It’s tough to do successfully, especially when it’s not something you were trained for.
As a physical therapist you’re trained to treat people and help them live better and healthier lives, not make financial negotiations. But the fact is you can’t continue to do what you’re trained to do without having to negotiate terms of payment first. This negotiation doesn’t mean simply agreeing to whatever the payer says– it’s making sure you get what your time, service and skills are truly worth– and that’s the hard part right there.
Fortunately there are ways to negotiate terms to your benefit. Following these tips and armed with the right facts and figures, successful negotiation can be achieved.
The first thing you need to do in order to negotiate successfully is to analyze your current payers’ performance and fee schedules. Identify the payers with whom you do the most business along with the most common CPT codes you use. Get the number of times you bill each code with each payer, and multiply each number by the proposed payment amounts. Then add up all the totals per payer and divide by the total number of codes billed. This should give you the weighted average for each payer, and a good indication of which contracts are most valuable to you.
Apart from this you could also compare the rates of individual CPT codes and approach payers who pay the least amount about increasing to at least reach the average reimbursement rate for these codes.
One Lesser-Known Way Private Practices Can Gain a Competitive Edge
Between hospitals and the numerous other private practices just around the corner, competition can be tough for any private practice. It can be difficult to set your practice apart when many others offer the same services at the same prices. There’s always the solution of providing greater value, but with
The Basic Principles of Using Modifier 59 in Physical Therapy
For therapists, coding can be complicated. And it gets even more complicated when modifiers enter the picture. Modifiers are tricky things. Used wisely, they can help maximize your revenue. But used erroneously, they can wreak havoc in the form of claim denials and penalties. And if there’s one modifier that
PT Billing Basics: The Coding Systems Every Physical Therapist Should Know
In physical therapy the primary concern is treating the patient, and rightly so. But while it may not be the most important aspect of the job, getting paid should come at a very close second since it’s the only way by which a practice can continue. Getting paid however means
New Physical Therapy Coding Updates for 2017
It’s time again to welcome the new year and with it, changes that will make our practices better than before. Among these changes? Physical Therapy codes.
Recently it was announced that the Physical Therapy Evaluation (97001) and Physical Therapy Re-evaluation (97002) codes have been deleted, and four new codes have been released in their place. These codes will be effective by January 1, 2017.
The new evaluation codes (97161 to 97163) center around services ranging in complexity from low to high, each with a code descriptor specifying required components. To give you an idea of each new code, some of the requirements are stated below:
Code no. 97161 – Physical therapy evaluation: low complexity, requiring the following components:
• A history with no personal factors and/or comorbidities that impact the plan of care;
• An examination of body system(s) using standardized tests and measures addressing 1-2 elements from any of the following: body structures and functions, activity limitations, and/or participation restrictions;
• A clinical presentation with stable and/or uncomplicated characteristics; and
• Clinical decision making of low complexity using standardized patient assessment instrument and/or measurable assessment of functional outcome.
In this case, usually 20 minutes are spent face-to-face with the patient and/or family.
Why Trust Medical Billing Technology Today
Technology has penetrated practically every field and industry, and medical billing is no exception.
From training to application, technology has become part and parcel of medical billing and coding. There are online medical billing courses, virtual patient databases and electronic means of communicating with and billing patients. Yet some practices still feel apprehensive about embracing technology when it comes to billing, and their concerns would not be unfounded.
Common Concerns with Technology
The biggest and most common concern over the use of medical billing technology is security. In recent years, we’ve heard of numerous cases of hackers breaking into secure company databases, resulting in hundreds of sensitive and highly valuable client information being exposed to the public or going into the wrong hands.
How our client feel about us
