When Compassion and Compliance Collide New initiatives By now many of you, especially those of you who provide scheduled, routine, non-emergency transports (ie. Dialysis, radiation, etc.) are becoming aware of a new Medicare trial initiative for pre-authorizing approval for claims submitted for these types of transports. The Centers for Medicare...
The Puzzle EMS Billing Has Become The missing piece… Have you ever put together a puzzle and found near the end that you are missing a piece or two? It’s frustrating; isn’t it? You have just enough of the pieces put together that you can see the picture you are...
Documentation Skills and the Long-Time EMS Provider New Tricks You’ve heard the phrase; “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” Well that may be true about canines, but it certainly isn’t the case with us humans. It’s especially not the case with EMS providers. Long-time EMS providers should have...
Electronic Payments Fast Becoming the Norm Trending The past two years have ushered in a shift in the revenue stream flowing from EMS billing programs from paper checks to electronic payments. The trend is quickly moving toward an all-electronic reimbursement method arising from the major insurance payers and their need...
Winter Flu Season- How to Document? Welcome Back! We trust that you had a wonderful holiday season filled with many warm memories. We’re back to our normal routine so let’s dig into a direct documentation topic…. How to document transports that are initiated either directly or indirectly due to the...
One Last Look at Ambulance Billing in 2014- What’s Next? You Deserve a Break! We’re going to make this our last blog post for 2014. You deserve a break! But before we sign-off to celebrate the season, we thought we’d take a moment to reflect on the year that’s been...
The End to Medicare “Back Billing” Save the Date! Mark this date on your calendar- February 3, 2015. This is the date that sweeping and historic changes will take effect for the Medicare program. Late last week, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) issued the final rule on...
The Ambulance Billing Office Christmas Gift List Easy to please… Now there may be those of you who differ in your opinion, but take it from those of us who have been part of an ambulance billing office for a long time, we’re actually easy to please. With that in...
Grading the Documentation Pop Quiz-Scenario 2 Wrapping it up… We wrap up the Our Documentation Quiz, 3-Part series this week with our discussion of “Scenario 2.” If you missed the first week’s post that outlines Scenario 2, use the blog home page to drill down to our post two weeks...
CMS Releases 2015 Zip Code Changes Affecting Ambulance Bonus Payments AAA Challenges CMS-Revisions Possible Change Announced Last week the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released the final rule that sets in motion a significant shift in the way that geographical areas are determined to identify urban versus rural...
