Scalpel to Success: Mastering the Art of Medical Billing for Surgeons

General surgeons run a tight ship. Meeting new patients, preparing for surgery, performing surgery, monitoring the patient’s condition, traveling from one hospital or facility to the next, ensuring their team remains on the same page at all times – general surgeons don’t get a lot of breaks throughout the day. 

Even when the scrubs come off, the grind continues. Writing orders, completing paperwork, billing patients and/or insurance companies, processing payments, assisting other physicians and/or surgeons – it never ends. If they don’t have somewhere to be, then they have something to do or someone to meet. 

Did you know most doctors spend anywhere from 20% to 45% of their time doing paperwork? The billing process alone takes several hours out of a surgeon’s day – hours that could be spent saving lives and caring for patients. Something about that doesn’t sit right with us, and it shouldn’t sit right with you, either!

Don’t worry – that’s where a medical billing company comes into play.

Look, we get it – medical billing isn’t as easy as it looks. There are a lot of moving parts to consider and regulations to follow, which opens the door to a wide range of challenges, obstacles, errors, mistakes, and delays that put your practice at risk – not just financially, but your credibility and reputation is on the line. 

With a medical billing company, all your billing needs are taken care of by professionals who understand the billing and coding industry better than anyone. Submitting claims, double-checking codes, correcting denials, processing payments, dealing with collections, credentialing – medical billing companies do it all.

And since medical billing companies stay up-to-date on all the latest rules and regulations, surgeons can rest easy knowing their private practice is following ICD-9/10, CPT, AAPC, and HCPCS coding guidelines by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and American Medical Association (AMA).

Millenium Medical Billing: A Surgeon’s True Best Friend

Most surgeons who run a solo or private practice elect to take on the medical billing process all by their lonesome. While this might make sense in the early days of your practice, it becomes less and less feasible as your business grows. Eventually, challenges start to arise, and your practice starts to suffer. 

Let’s take a look at some of the most common challenges surgeons face with the medical billing process: 

• Coding Regulations - inputting the wrong billing codes and packages will result in payment delays, denials, legal issues, and much more. 
• Insurance Companies - aside from coding regulations, insurance companies have their own sets of rules and regulations surgeons must follow. 
• Documenting Services - if services aren’t properly and fully documented, the insurance company can and will deny the claim. 
• Time Factor - medical billing takes an extreme amount of time, energy, effort, and focus, which could be better spent elsewhere. 
• Late Payments - denials, inaccurate information, collections, and more can result in late payments, which means your practice won’t be getting paid for a while.
• Software Limitations - most surgeons aren’t using state-of-the-art software to manage their billing needs, which can slow you down in the long run.

Most surgeons have no idea just how much money their practice is losing due to poor billing habits and error-filled claims. It’s usually not until they see the difference – not just financially, but operationally – that they realize how desperate they were for help. Don’t worry – it’s not too late to turn your practice around!

Helping Surgeons Cut Costs, Not Corners

Cutting corners in the medical billing industry is a recipe for failure. Lost revenue, claims denials, coding inaccuracies, reimbursement delays, legal trouble – things can go south in a hurry, especially if you don’t have a trusted team of medical billers working day and night to ensure your practice remains compliant.

Here are just some of the benefits of outsourcing your medical billing needs: 

• Maximize earning potential, increase profits, and reduce revenue loss
• Fewer reimbursement delays and late payments – more on-time payments
• More time to focus on treating, caring for, and monitoring your patients’ health
• Decrease overhead and reduce the risk of overwhelming your staff
• Compliance with HIPAA, ICD-9/10, CPT, AAPC, HCPCS, CMS, and AMA
• State-of-the-art, easy-to-use software to ensure everyone’s on the same page
• Experience working with most insurance companies and government programs
• Fewer errors, typos, mistakes, inaccuracies, and complications in the medical billing process

No surgeon wants to hear that their practice is losing money, but that can all be solved by hiring a proven team to replace or complement your current staff. Trust us – it’ll be one of the greatest decisions you ever make and will allow you to pour so much more time into the things that matter most, like patient care. 

Less Paperwork, Better Care, Happier Patients – Sign Me Up!

General surgeons spend more than a decade in the classroom and operating room learning how to perform surgery on various parts of the body. They spend thousands of hours perfecting their craft and honing their skills, yet what do they spend one-third of their time doing? Paperwork. That’s not right! 

At Millenium Medical Billing, we take pride in offering best-in-class medical billing services – ranging from patient billing to medical coding, credentialing, managing EHR, reporting, collections, payment posting, demographic record-keeping, and even training your billing department to be more diligent and accurate.

We believe in listening to the wants and needs of each individual practice to ensure their goals are not only met, but over-exceeded. We take a client-centric approach and combine that with state-of-the-art technology, industry experience, and a diverse clientele list – one that includes surgeons like yourself. 

If you’d like to learn more about how medical billing can help transform your surgical practice, don’t hesitate to book a consultation with Millenium Medical Billing – where your billing prayers are answered!