Medical Billing During COVID-19: What to Expect
COVID-19 has caused enormous revenue losses and brought about a global recession that will, without a doubt, have an impact on the healthcare industry that will be felt even years later.
The pandemic has led to a colossal recession, with cities like Florida being no exception; it has fostered some of the most major challenges with patient communication that we see today. The recession it has brought, could decidedly affect the health insurance coverage. Not only millions of beneficiaries could become uninsured by the year-end, as a direct result of job loss but millions more could stop using and benefitting from the employer-sponsored insurance coverage. It is this shift in paradigm in the field of insurance coverage that is leading to critical changes in the payer mix and the payer billing tactics.
There’s an increasing demand for high-deductible health plans which has led most care providers to shift their focus towards the various self-pay methods. However, this crisis scenario has encouraged healthcare organizations to start adopting self-pay patient billing methods in order to foster better payments, which means – you would see a lot of the medical billing company in Florida that you work with!
New Updates to Tracking and Billing Updates Brought About by COVID-19
The healthcare service providers have now been facing massive pressures to diagnose, then treat, and finally provide follow-up care. For even the best medical billing company in Florida, amongst other cities, things are a bit more difficult, as the government-introduced updates to the codes used in billing would have to be kept track of. As an example, the ICD-10 pandemic-related code which the CDC had initially planned to roll out on October 1, 2020, was brought out online on April 1, 2020. Given that the number of asymptomatic cases were increasing as the virus’ spread was nowhere under control, providers have had to use the code U07.1, 2019-nCoV acute respiratory disease, if a patient is diagnosed with COVID-19, since a few months early on.
Need for Reduction in the Number of Denied Claims
Another thing that the providers must take additional steps towards helping bring down, is the number of claims denied. There’s so much financial uncertainty we’re all facing during the novel coronavirus pandemic, that the providers surely don’t lack a clear motivation to reduce these problematic claims.
The strategy should include analysis of the denial as well as the audit data – in terms of the reason, the payer, the type, and the number of errors occurring – all in order to pinpoint where exactly you’re going wrong. In addition, medical billing services in Florida, as well as other places, could deploy automated revenue management tools that will help you develop custom edits for every payer that you work with, that would further help with the claim auditing process prior to submission.
Final Word
When it comes to healthcare providers, the primary goal has always been to provide superior patient care. Revenue cycle and billing professionals undoubtedly have their work already cut out for them as we adapt and create strategies to better handle the disruptions caused by the mounting infections of COVID-19. But, the healthcare industry has, in more ways than one, lagged behind in adopting innovative technologies. This pandemic changed that; COVID-19 has made the organizations accept and adapt to the change.
While the resurgence from the financial impact of this crisis could take a long time, the healthcare leaders can meanwhile brainstorm over creating new patient-centric strategies that help them rise above the challenges of the pandemic.
