Providing neonatal billing & coding services is a complex procedure that often gets overwhelming for the billers and coders alike. There is absolutely no chance of even the tiniest bit of error due to the nature of these services.
That’s the reason why you should be well aware of even the most minute details of this process. Keep on reading to learn the ways to better your cash flow and enhance the RCM.
Overview of Neonatal Billing & Coding
Both neonatal billing and coding are specialized in billing and coding processes related to neonatal care. Neonatal care basically involves medical services provided to newborn infants. The time duration for neonatal care is usually 28 days after being born.
So, this is how we can truly understand the delicate nature of neonatology. You are guaranteed to come across many unique challenges when dealing with the treatment of newborns. The billing and coding process requires one of the highest levels of expertise and care. Neonatal care involves a wide range of services.
Neonatology is a huge arena; services start from the basic routine check-ups and can go up to intensive care. The patients are also quite varied, ranging from premature infants to critically ill newborns. This adds to the complexity of neonatal practices. In order to be effective at neonatology billing, you must have a clear and in-depth understanding of these procedures.
How Does Neonatal Billing & Coding Help?
Facilitates research
Neonatal billing solutions are considered a great field for research. With the help of the correct neonatal codes, you can have robust and reliable data for research. These can be utilized as a key advancement in neonatology. The hospitals also ensure better outcomes for the infants.
Prevents Fraud and Abuse
By implementing stringent coding standards, fraud and abuse can be significantly avoided. Strict regulations must be followed to conduct ethical billing. What does the standard entail? The standard basically states that you cannot use the wrong codes. Why is this? This is because incorrect or wrong code results in underbilling or overbilling of the services.
Insurance Pre-authorizations
Neonatology coding serves as a major aid when it comes to hospitals getting their pre-authorizations. Why are pre-authorizations necessary? They are crucial for the submission of claims to insurance companies. They also aid in significantly improving the approval process for these claims.
Benefits Of Outsourcing Neonatal Billing & Coding Service
Neonatal Coding Expertise
The outsourcing companies have an expert group of billers and coders that are specially trained to handle neonatal billing and coding. These third-party vendors boast their rich and vivid experience of handling tons of neonatal patient cases in real life.
Access to the Recent Coding Updates
By outsourcing, providers are able to follow any medical coding changes. These changes are guided by the regular standards set by healthcare regulatory authorities. Outsourcing billing companies have the necessary resources to regularly update their services.
Service Flexibility
Outsourcing companies also have flexible services. They can tailor their neonatal billing services to match your requirements. They usually have a lot of models. You can choose one that fulfills the specific needs of your neonatal care.
Enhanced Patient Satisfaction
Outsourcing your neonatal billing to offshore medical billing companies is a result-driven way to improve your billing and RCM process. They can efficiently eradicate the errors and issues that affect your patients. Patients experience positive interactions with your staff.
What Are the Standard Guidelines for Outsourcing Neonatal Medical Billing Services?
Performance Monitoring and Reporting
Hospitals should monitor the performance of outsourcing companies. Those systems should also report it back. This way, you can thoroughly evaluate the effectiveness of your outsourced billing partners.
This way, you can thoroughly assess if they are properly following the set standards. And maintaining billing accuracy while assigning medical codes and sending claims. These assessments enable you to identify the specific areas of improvement.
Risk Management Protocols
Healthcare providers can also set up risk management protocols. They must follow these protocols to address the potential challenges affecting the billing processes. This way, you can prepare a quick and genuine response to any issues.
Moreover, it can eradicate their impact on your practice’s financial health. Here, you can define and document any risk scenarios related to your neonatal billing. These scenarios can include medical coding errors and unwanted delays in claims processing.
HIPAA Compliance
Your outsourcing neonatology billing company should sincerely follow the HIPAA Act. This guideline is non-negotiable for neonatal billing outsourcing. You should especially ensure data security as you work with sensitive patient information.
The most essential thing is data transmission. It should be extremely secure. And you can ensure that through audits. You can audit the security measures maintained by your outsourcing company. It will confirm whether your third-party billing company, such as charge entry, follows the relevant standards.
Documentation Transparency
Outsourcing neonatology billing companies should also maintain thorough and transparent documentation. Precisely, they should provide clear and detailed documents to the payer. This is a key step in neonatal billing. Those documents can include patient details and medical reports. Others can explain that the medical codes perfectly match your treatments.
Above all, neonatal treatments are related to procedures conducted on newborns. Billing staff should also modify the process per their requirement. They are mostly done to your billing records. Moreover, all-inclusive documentation can maintain accountability between you as the provider and the outsourcing companies. It will also save your practice from internal audits and compliance verification.
