Think why you’re losing lots of money on your practice and you don’t even know it.
How could you not be aware of thousands of dollars being lost, you say? Surely that kind of money can’t just disappear without you knowing?
It’s time to break those Five Bad Coding and Billing habits and get your practice the profits it deserves.
- Forgetting about Assessment and Management Time: There are several components that make up your service time: patient assessment and preparation (Pre-Time), performing the procedure (Intra-Time), and lastly, documentation and discharge (Post-Time).Usually they’ll just include the time it took to perform the procedure, and that’s that. This basically eliminates the assessment and documentation done before and after the procedure respectively, both of which you have to be compensated for.
- Miscalculating the Intra-Time: Aside from forgetting to consider assessment and management time before and after the actual procedure, some therapists can also get their Intra-Time wrong, which leads to even more losses. Remember that Intra-Time includes all your one-on-one assessment and management time, from the moment you ask the patient how they have been since their last visit.
Basically, it starts the moment you professionally interact with the patient or the patient’s caregiver. Intra-Time also includes:
- The time you spend on the phone with the patient’s referring physician while still with the patient.
- Any time spent in documentation while still with the patient. If you want to maximize Intra-Time, do your notes during the appointment, as any done outside it will not be counted as billable.
- Making In and Out Time: Documenting “In and Out” time was a requirement once upon a time. Today, only a few non-Medicare payers will still ask for this. The only time requirement now is the start time of the appointment. So don’t indicate “In and Out” time for every payer and visit unless necessary, otherwise you’d just be welcoming auditors to scrutinize this against your scheduling program.
- Using Therapeutic Exercise for All Exercise Interventions: Some PTs have the tendency to use the classification Therapeutic Exercise for all interventions as long as it involves exercise, when in fact these interventions can be correctly classified as something else.
It’s important from a financial standpoint to classify these types of interventions more accurately, as others, such as Therapeutic Act, actually have a higher payment. Using one code in most or all of these interventions may also be a red flag to payers and make you more susceptible to payer reviews.
- Counting Time for Each Intervention:
It seems logical to count and document time spent on each individual intervention, but this can just be troublesome in several ways:
- It causes the therapist to undercount or round down the assessment and management minutes, which basically equates to loss of profit;
- Systems can automatically classify these as “Therapeutic Exercise” when they should be otherwise;
- Giving exact number of minutes per intervention (when not necessary) opens you up again to more scrutiny during an audit.
It’s not too late to break these bad habits and start some good ones, like partnering with a reliable medical billing company to help you maximize your practice profits. Interested in making that smart move? Get in touch with us today or Email us support@wonderws.com