|
|
|
If you encounter patients who do not have
insurance and due to financial hardship cannot afford to pay the full fee,
we recommend either providing the service without charge or billing your
standard fee for the services rendered. We also recommend that these services
be coded utilizing the appropriate CPT codes to define the services provided.
Once the charges are posted, the balance should be reduced or written off
only after making commercially reasonable attempts to collect the balance
or justifying determination of financial hardship.
It is important to note that there are
federal regulations (specifically in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) that prohibit discounting of fees filed for insurance
benefits. The best policy is to include the detail of all charges and related
discounts on all information provided about the encounter. This will avoid
situations in which patients use your information to independently file
insurance on services that have been discounted.
The one exception to maintaining separate fee schedules is for non-participating Medicare providers. Non-par providers are limited to charging the Medicare Limiting Charge. This amount is 115% above the non-par allowable fee.
Also, note that some Medicare participating providers choose to use a separate fee schedule for Medicare, billing only the allowed fee. We do not recommend this for many reasons not the least of which is that this method of billing understates gross charge production and artificially overstates the gross collection ratio.
Russell B. Still (bio...)
Executive Vice President
MMA does not provide
legal, accounting, or tax advice. If you need assistance in these
areas, we recommend that you consult a qualified professional. In
addition, please note that a client relationship with MMA is not established
by the submission of a question to this forum or by the publishing of MMA's
response.
 |
www.medicalmanagement.com |
|||||||||||||||
