General Surgery Billing Alerts that determine your revenue cycle

For a surgeon or medical practitioner, group practice, or clinic, the insights on how specialty medical billing works can be a scary task. A billing agent that that does not bill the sittings correctly misses deadlines, or does inadequate follow-up can have an abysmal effect on your facilities’ bottom line. However, a well-organized billing service cannot only simplify and improve your practice but also greatly improve both your income cycle and cash flow. At Medical Billers and Coders our specialist team is well trained in general and specialty surgery charging. For a general surgery practice to be financially successful, special attention must be paid to a number of factors, right from patient information and coding the full scope of services to following the Current Procedural Terminology codes and the Healthcare Common Procedure Coding System guidelines. Keep in mind that insurance provider payments are largely determined by these categories, and it is imperative that all information and codes are entered correctly by the billing team.

Avoid denials and reckless audit risks

Our general surgery coding personnel will strengthen your practice with timely guidance to overcome the challenges of general surgery coding updates that threaten your claims and compliance success.

Here are the updated General Surgery Coding alerts that determine your RCM:

• Capture the severity of rectal abscess with the K61 code set
• Use specific codes for cholangitis (K83.0)—including changed combination codes
• Forget the old post-procedure infection codes and use the new T81.4 series instead
• K35: Apply the newly expanded code set for appendicitis
• K82: Grab the right gall bladder code every time
• N35: Unblock your confusion over urethral stricture codes
• Avoid common errors in diagnosis documentation and surgery coding
• Change your ICD-10 ways to maximize CDI efforts and satisfy MIPS
• CPT 28820 – Amputation toe; metatarsophalangeal joint
• CPT 60240 – Thyroidectomy total or complete
• CPT 15271-15278 – Skin replacement surgery subsection
• CPT 15777 – Bilateral breast procedures
• CPT 37619 – ligation of inferior vena cava

It’s vital that you improve your understanding of what the documentation must say to support each ICD-10 surgery code. Spend some time gaining knowledge. This will pay off all year long by maximizing reimbursement and clinical documentation improvement efforts. Initially in 2019 ICD-10-CM code list introduces approximately 500 diagnosis code changes, with well over 100 in the general surgery category.

To prevent miscoding, a parenthetical was added to the CPT code set that instructs not to report 29581 in conjunction along with codes for treatment of incompetent veins (36465, 36466, 36468, 36470, 36471, 36473, 36474, 36475, 36476, 36478, 36479, 36482, and 36483) for the same extremity.  Also, note that code 29581 should not be reported for simply wrapping the lower extremity with elastic bandages.

With more than 135 ICD-10-CM changes and 69+ CPT updates, general surgery coders are among the most impacted in 2019. You need to traverse changes for eyelid neoplasm, post-procedural infection, appendicitis, FNA, allograft or replacement or removal of the permanent leadless pacemaker, and more.

Your practice stands to lose significant pay if you don’t have a solid grasp of the requirements for coding each, as well as a keen understanding of the many code options from which to choose. In fact, among practices that frequently perform these procedures, it’s not uncommon to accrue significant annual loss, sacrificing $20 to $100 per lesion.

Are you looking for a leading general surgery Billing Services Company? If, yes then your search ends here. Our billers and coders are updated with current industry updates to increase your general surgery practice revenue.

Outsource your medical billing practice today to the MBC a medical billing company. Connect with us at info@medicalbillersandcoders.com or call us at 888-357-3226.