Medicare Compliance & Reimbursement

3 key skills could make -- or break -- your billing and collections program. While general organizational skills and experience are helpful, these three top skills must be at the top of your checklist when evaluating who should take on your practice's billing: #1: Coding expertise. Your billing manager must have a good working knowledge of how to code for the services you provide, says Adrienne Rabinowitz, billing manager for Western Monmouth Orthopedic Associates in Freehold, N.J. #2: Good front-office skills. Your practice must be able to submit clean claims if you hope to recover money without significant delays. That means your billing manager must be capable of training your front-line staff so they become "highly skilled at doing telephone appeals, explaining situations to patients, and ... writing appeals with a high success rate of additional payments," Rabinowitz says. #3: Computer skills. Especially in today's high-tech world, your billing manager must be [...]