It is time for Dermatologists to face medical billing challenges & overcome financial burden

Are you a healthcare provider who feels like your Dermatology Practice is not earning the money it should? What you need to understand is that seeing more patients doesn’t mean it will lead to more revenue. If your strategies for income generation are not adept, it will only lead to more work and stress. A proper process of Dermatology Medical Billing is carried out for submitting claims and receiving payments for the services imparted by Dermatologists. Successful medical billing is an important part of every revenue cycle as it plays a huge role in the financial health of healthcare.

Hereunder, you are going to get a deep insight into Dermatology Medical Billing Challenges and the ways that will help you streamline your entire billing process beforehand.

Major Dermatology Medical Billing Challenges

Documentation Challenges

The foremost reason for your claim denials in Dermatology practice is incorrect documentation. Accurate documentation acts as a legal document that will prove the services rendered and why the patient was seen by a Dermatologist. An accurate document may also serve as evidence in a court of law if needed.

The major concern is that the use of modifiers is not well understood, and 59 modifiers are used in an excessive manner. Various Dermatologists struggle with the issue of medical documentation and use of modifiers.

Dermatology Billing Compliance

It is evident that a lack of billing knowledge may lead to the wrong use of modifiers. CMS and other payers constantly scrutinize whether these modifiers are used in any case of over payment. According to an article in Dermatology Times, approximately 60% of E/M services performed by dermatologists get submitted with modifier 25 attached. This means that any change in the modifier 25 payment policy will affect dermatology more than other specialties. Therefore, it is important to follow billing compliance in the process of Dermatology Medical Billing.

Outdated Patient Information

Another challenge that dermatologists face during the medical billing process is collecting the latest information about their patients. Constant efforts are made to stay up to date about the changing scenario the situation often gets out of hand. To save your practice from months of unpaid claims, time should be taken to double-check insurance details.

After going through the challenges, we should also know the ways to overcome them.

The ways to overcome Medical Billing Challenges in Dermatology are explained hereunder:

Claim Submission on Time

As it is challenging to get full reimbursement from the payer, timely submissions can increase the chances of claim submission to a large extent. To improve the clean claim ratio, you should prioritize filing claims on a daily basis.

Timely Verifying & Updating Patient Information 

Every time a patient comes in, he is reluctant to share information and handover insurance cards. It should be from your end that you check patient insurance information. It is the only way to make sure that you’ll be able to handle the further process smoothly and make necessary changes as required.

Carefully Track & Follow Up on Denied Claims

The most important part is to be updated about – ‘what you are not paid for’. For this you need to stay connected with the deposited claims. In case a claim takes more than 60 days to get paid, ensure a follow up before resubmitting. In certain situations, just a single phone call can save your claim from getting denied.

Until now, you must be familiar with certain challenges in Dermatology Medical Billing and different ways to overcome them. However, a smart approach would be to outsource the entire procedure for your dermatology practice to medical billing professionals. One such expert medical billing provider that can take away all your billing worries is – Unify Healthcare Services. For expert dermatology medical billing solutions, you can directly get in touch with Unify RCM.