{"id":898,"date":"2012-03-09T07:24:44","date_gmt":"2012-03-09T07:24:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.medicalbillersandcodersblog.com\/?p=898"},"modified":"2014-07-26T13:58:02","modified_gmt":"2014-07-26T13:58:02","slug":"understanding-physician-assistants-reimbursement-environment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.medicalbillersandcoders.com\/blog\/understanding-physician-assistants-reimbursement-environment\/","title":{"rendered":"Understanding Physician Assistants Reimbursement Environment"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cAmidst all these overriding Medicare or health insurance guidelines surrounding the reimbursement for their assistants\u2019 services, physicians would invariably feel exhausted for doubling up as medical billers along with their primary focus of clinical efficiency. Therefore, physicians would be well-off outsourcing medical billing services<\/a> that are adept at handling their assistants\u2019 reimbursement issue along with their own.\u201d<\/p>\n

From what used to be auxiliary to physicians\u2019 main clinical services, services of physician assistants (comprising PAs, NPs, and Clinical Nurse Specialists) have evolved to be substitute to physician services themselves. In fact, in most of the primary care centers and non-surgical clinics, physician assistants\u2019 have become as trustworthy as qualified physicians. Recognizing this phenomenon, majority of the primary care and non-surgical clinics are gradually migrating to an operational model dominated by physician assistants operating under one or two supervising physicians.<\/p>\n

Although an alarming shortage of qualified physicians in the face of spiraling patient-population may have been the primary reason behind this changing equation, cost optimization or revenue augmentation (as physician assistants\u2019 services can be bought at a comparatively lesser remuneration than what it can cost for physicians\u2019 services) may also have equally been responsible for the shift towards physician assistants. The clinical or hospital management, on their part, would have happily carried on with this model as long as it seemed feasible but for the nuances of billing for their assistants\u2019 services, which seem as challenging as billing for their own services.<\/p>\n

The numerous guidelines that govern reimbursement for physician assistant services have tended to weigh rather heavy on physician practices. Amongst many such guidelines, the following are noteworthy:<\/p>\n