How Can Affordable Mental Health Medical Billing Services Benefit Practices

Mental health services are in high demand in today's fast-paced world, so it's important for mental health practices to optimize their operations and streamline their revenue cycles. One solution that works well is to hire medical billing services that are made to meet the specific needs of mental health practices. 

Managing a practice involves many responsibilities. These include treating patients, maintaining an office, marketing your practice, and managing insurance billing. As practice grows, more tasks are added. These tasks include managing payroll, scheduling, and communicating processes. They understand that having too many responsibilities can be stressful. 

When you hire a mental health billing company, they take care of your insurance billing. This means you have one less thing to worry about. 

In this blog post, we'll talk about the benefits of affordable medical billing services for mental health and how they can help mental health practices make money.

Claim Submission

When people think about insurance billing, they usually think about submitting claims. Submitting a claim involves creating a paper form called CMS-1500 or an electronic form called EDI. This form includes details about the patient and the provider and is sent to the insurance company. The purpose is to get paid for the services provided. Submitting a claim requires attention to detail. 

Medical billers know how to submit claims to different insurance companies. They are also good at finding common problems in claims. Your biller can assist in finding the correct payer IDs for insurance companies. This helps ensure that claims are sent to the right place for processing. Billers check all claim information before submitting to increase the chance of a clean claim. A clean claim is a claim that processes on the first submission.

Expertise in Mental Health Billing

Medical billing services for mental health that are affordable know how hard it is to bill for mental health care. They know a lot about the different codes, documentation requirements, and reimbursement processes for mental health services. Their expertise makes sure that billing is accurate and follows the rules. This lowers the risk of claim denials and helps mental health practices get the most money possible.

Increased Revenue Capture

 It is important for the financial health of mental health practices to maximize revenue capture. Affordable medical billing services know how to find and code all billable services correctly because they have the knowledge and experience to do so. They make sure that mental health providers get paid properly for the services they provide, which increases revenue and improves the financial health of the practice.

Responsible Coding

You, as the provider, should be responsible for coding sessions using CPT or ICD-10 codes. Billers can offer advice on codes and modifiers, but they have restrictions on coding because of HIPAA rules. Your biller cannot code sessions for you. However, they can provide guidance in coding and finding answers from the insurance company. They have a lot of knowledge that you can depend on.

Following Up

Following up on claims is a time-consuming part of insurance billing. Providers often feel stressed when they manage their own billing. Your biller can follow up and has experience knowing which departments to call. They know how to navigate insurance portals and ask the right questions to get the answers you need. Follow-up involves handling denials and rejections. This includes taking necessary actions to fix these issues. It also involves checking the status of any pending claims and claims that are not yet processed.

Payment Posting

Posting payments involves recording the amount of money received from customers.

It is important to keep track of payments in your EHR accurately. Knowing how much money is owed to you can give you an idea of your cash flow, but it's not exact. Some providers only use their EHR to track finances. We suggest not doing this. You should use your EHR and books together to manage your practice's finances.

Medical billers handle payment posting only in your EHR system. They don't do it in your accounting system. They use info from your insurance company to match and post payments in your EHR. You can get this information in different ways. You can get it electronically with an ERA. Or you can get a paper version called an EOB, which is the same thing as an ERA. Usually, your biller can handle ERAs. However, if you receive paper EOBs, you need to send them to your biller for posting.

Setting up EFT

Your biller cannot set up electronic funds transfers because it is not secure to share such information. Billing Freedom handles EFT setup only if it's needed for ERA setup. ERAs are important for successful billing. The medical billing setup team may require you to complete certain steps during the process. Your biller can help you with setting up an EFT payment. However, you will have to complete the steps on your own.

Eligibility and Benefits

You may qualify for certain benefits based on your eligibility. These benefits can provide assistance in various areas such as healthcare, education, and financial support.

Checking eligibility and benefits is a part of billing. It tells us about the patient's insurance coverage and benefits based on their plan. It takes time. Your biller gets this information from the insurance company. Medical billers can give you benefit information in 1-2 days.

Billing Freedom reminds providers that billers ask the right questions to get accurate benefit information. However, insurance companies and the timing of claims processing can cause inaccurate information. It's better to have an estimate of eligibility and benefits rather than no information. However, it's important to view the estimate as an approximation rather than a definite fact.

Working with a biller is great because they have a lot of knowledge and experience. Medical billers suggest that providers ask their billers questions. Your biller will help you find the right information or resources, even if it's not your responsibility. They want to help your practice succeed and see ourselves as part of your team. They recommend that you seek help from a more suitable professional in the situations mentioned above.

You need to make sure that medical credentials are up-to-date and that practice information is current.

Affordable mental health medical billing services offer a lot of benefits that help mental health practices be successful and last. By giving their billing tasks to these specialized services, providers of mental health care can feel more for their billingfreedom.