General Physician
An internal medicine practice often includes general and family medicine patients, so it can have one of the highest numbers of different patients coming through its doors in any given week. This means there may be any number of reasons patients come in, resulting in billing and coding issues arising constantly. While there may be few complicated procedures performed in the office, there will certainly be minor procedures and prescriptions in addition to the wide array of diagnoses that must be coded.
Billing and Coding Errors
The medical coding system is complex, and with all the codes an internal medicine office deals with, it’s no wonder an in-house medical billing and coding staff has trouble keeping up. Compliance charting and coding plus unintentional under-coding and up-coding also cause a lot of problems.
The internal medicine revenue cycle is hit especially hard by losses due to medical billing and coding errors because it is a low-paying specialty, as medical fields go, and insurers are prone to cut allowable billing amounts for so many of the more common services that are performed when seeing general medicine patients.
Front-office Challenges
The large number of routine and non-routine activities that regularly occur mean that scheduling, rescheduling and annual scheduling require additional staff time.
Keep track of claims during its entire “life cycle.” The majority of internal medicine physicians fall 6 to 9% short of their earned revenues because of claims on which payers never respond (even with a denial) and practices never pursue;
Compare payments to contractual allowables. Failing to do this cost most internal medicine practices at least 5% of their possible collections