The Reimbursement Method Used At St. Anthony 's Hospital

The U.S. Department of Defense has required Brooke Army Medical Center to seek reimbursement for medical procedures conducted on third party insured civilian patients. The need for a professional billing service to effectively acquire third party reimbursement for healthcare services within Brooke Army Medical Center is essential to the financial success of the organization. The hospital is operating in a demanding environment due to a highly regulated healthcare industry and an uneven playing field compared with other local community hospitals. Nearly one-third of the nation’s hospitals demonstrated operating losses in 2014 with Brooke Army Medical Center being no exception. Additionally, uninsured patients are costing U.S. hospitals $900

It is important to follow payer guidelines when completing a claim form; otherwise, reimbursement will be delayed until the form is corrected.

It is essential for an administrator to understand how private and government payers impact actual reimbursement. Government payers have a standardized benefit structure. The one benefit is that registration staff have an easier time calculating payment due (copayments) for service and can set up payment arrangements. Since the most significant proportion of funds coming into a healthcare organization is usually payments from third-party payers, therefore, it is critical to know how each reimbursement affect the others that come in. Healthcare organization may have hundreds of different payer’s relationships in the form of different contracts that have their own rates of payment that are usually different from other payers for an identical

Another term often used with both not-for-profit and for-profit hospitals is uncompensated hospital care. With not-for-profit and for-profit, revenues come from daily operations. What happens if a person cannot afford the care in a not-for-profit hospital? Regardless of the type operation, hospitals must stabilize the patient and transport to a public hospital, even though they are not required to treat these patients. This uncompensated care is classified as uncompensated care, bad debt, or charity care. For-profit hospitals write off this bad debt and use these figures to offset their profits and to assist in developing their costs to Medicare and Medicaid programs.

1). Private health insurance is another way of paying for health care. The associated costs of health care are offset according to the policy the person has purchased. Private health insurance costs are paid by premiums, deductibles, and co-payments from the insured person. There is also the portion of people who are uninsured and are considered self-pay patients. These uninsured patients represent a large part of unpaid services. Although, not all uninsured patients leave bills to be absorbed by the health care system many do, and this increases the costs of health care to be absorbed in other areas.

The careful documentation and subsequent billing process within the course of a patient’s care is an important piece within the healthcare system as a whole. Proper documentation in a patient’s chart relating to any service or procedure is not only important for this patient’s future medical care, but for the facility to receive an accurate reimbursement for the services provided. Reimbursement is affected by every department within the hospital. Healthcare is a business in the long run, and inaccuracies within the reimbursement process will affect the financial stability of the hospital. If a department is mismanaging reimbursement data it could result

In the past several years, there have been several changes in economic policy at federal and state levels. The two economic policies that present to be the most precedent for healthcare leaders with concern to facility reimbursement are the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and the switch from volume to value reimbursement. First, there is the ACA policy, which have affected healthcare facilities and their reimbursement methods. In fact, ever since this policy was implemented, provider reimbursement has started to decrease in terms of fee-for-service payments (The Common-Wealth Fund, 2015). In other words, the intention of this policy was to provide budget relief to the government payers as well as giving providers an incentive to provider patients with great quality of care.

We as Coders and Billers should understand the interaction of the CPT procedural codes and the ICD diagnostic codes. The providers receive payment for their service, whether it is an office visit or an operation in the hospital. All services need to be coded for proper payment.

Another factor that has contributed to the over-utilization and increased treatment charges is the fact that providers set the prices for services. Patients were free to seek any type of healthcare services that they thought they required for their well-being, while providers set the costs for each service that was billed to indemnity insurance companies (Shi & Singh, 2015). Insurance companies had little control on the types of services that the patient received and prices billed for each service. The fee-for-service model encourages excessive and unwarranted procedures and offers no incentives to utilize economical services

Another issue for fee-for-service system is that the providers set the prices for services. Patients were free to seek any type of healthcare services that they thought they required, while providers set the costs for each service that was billed to indemnity insurance companies (Shi & Singh, 2015). Insurance companies had little control on the types of services that the patient received and prices billed for each service. The fee-for-service model encourages excessive and unwarranted procedures and offers no incentives to utilize economical services (Smith, 2010). While the patients enjoy the freedom of being able to seek out their own services, over-utilization of expensive services on unnecessary and highly technical services increased healthcare costs.

In an attempt to keep your medical cost for services to a minimum, we have adopted the following policy regarding payments and billing. If you do not have insurance coverage, payment will be due in full amount on the day the service is giving.

In 1983, the Medicare prospective payment program was implemented which allowed hospitals to be reimbursed a set payment based on the patient’s diagnosis, or Diagnosis Related Groups (DRG), regardless of what treatment was provided or how long the patient was hospitalized (Jacob & Cherry, 2007). To keep the costs below the diagnosis related payment, hospitals had to manage efficiently the treatment provided to a client and reduce the client’s length of stay (Jacob & Cherry, 2007). Case management, or internal case management “within the walls” of the health care facilities was created to streamline costs while maintaining quality care (Jacob & Cherry, 2007).

Fee for service indemnity plans are essentially health insurance plans in which the consumer may choose any provider or hospital that they want to use; however, these plans are typically more expensive than other plans (Mukherji & Fockler, 2014). The fee for service plans pay only for services rendered, typically using the CPT coding system (Reimbursement, 2016). The indemnity plans will require the provider to bill the insurance company for services rendered (Zuvekas & Cohen, 2016). Typically, the insurance company will pick up 80% of the patient’s bill and the patient is responsible for the other 20% (Zuvekas &

Understanding the classification of healthcare services in terms of acute and long term care enable us to plan for services, to describe institutions, and to allocate funding and reimbursement. In the United States, healthcare services provided by health care providers (such as doctors and hospitals) are paid for by the following including, private insurance, Government insurance programs, people themselves (personal, out-of-pocket funds). Additionally, the government directly provides some health care in government hospitals and clinics staffed by government employees. Examples are the Veteran’s Health Administration and the Indian Health Service.

Hospitals constantly “forget” to enter insurance information. I had a car accident in April, it literally took months for them to update their system with given information. What infuriate me, is the high cost for self-pay or high deductible patients. The insurance companies have a contracted amount with providers, they accept a set amount for services render. For example; Medicaid will pay $30 for an office visit, Medicare will pay $50, and BCBS will pay $75. However, a self-pay patient is required to pay $150 and high deductible is discounted 10%. My opinion, the insurance company, Big Pharma and expensive providers are in