Practice Management Alert

For verifying patients' insurance, technology can be a good investment for your practice. For most practices, eligibility verification is "not a common practice," says Lori Foley, CMA, CMM, a senior physician practice management consultant with Gates Moore & Co. in Atlanta. That's because the "labor-intensive" verification process generates an overhead cost associated with expending staff and time, she adds.

But medical billing offices that verify eligibility recover the cost in lower collections expenses, Foley adds. They bypass the loop of filing claims and receiving denials by knowing "for sure" that they can file insurance.

To avoid staff and time constraints, busy offices should consider investing in an insurance verification machine, said Victoria Jackson, administrator and chief executive officer of Southern Orange County Pediatric Associates, in a recent The Coding Institute teleconference. Similar to a Visa machine, the verification device processes the identification numbers you punch in, and it prints out a receipt that includes:
the patient's insurance the deductible if it's been met, what it is the copayment whether the patient is under managed care the primary carrier. "It's a tool we've used for a couple of years, and I find it invaluable," she says. You have printed information, so nobody can contest your insurance claims, including the patient who may try to wiggle out of a deductible or co-pay, she argues. Visual information will have a more immediate impact on a patient than the threat of a phone conversation with her insurance company, she says.

Unfortunately, all good things don't come for free, and an insurance verification system will cost your practice. For Jackson's system, there's a charge of 17 cents per hit, but she finds that cost worth spending given the return staff that are free to do other tasks. $ $ $