Documenting Emergent Scenarios Post October 1 Focus If you’re a regular reader of this space you are aware that we focus A LOT on medical necessity, especially as the definitions contained in the rules pertain to Medicare. With anywhere from 40% to 60% or upward of the average ambulance reimbursements being derived from Medicare Fee-for-Service […]
Behind on PCRs? Focus! Frustration Frustration reigns in the billing office when there are an x-number of your EMS agency’s runs that have yet to be turned into Patient Care Reports (PCRs) for billing submission. As we think about our own field experiences and we watch our colleagues, we find the problem of unwritten Patient […]
ICD-10 Behind the Scenes The stuff you don’t see… In previous blog posts we talked a lot about the new ICD-10 diagnosis code conversation set to take place on October 1st, primarily focusing on the things we see- namely documentation and the interpretation of the Patient Care Report documentation in the billing office that turns […]
Sign-In Please! “Will the next mystery guest sign-in please?” Back in the sixties there was this popular TV show that began with this question. The viewer got to see who the celebrity was based on the person’s signature and the contestants had to guess who the person was by asking questions about the person. Signatures […]
On Drop Downs and Written Narratives- Connecting the Data in our PCRs “Paint a Picture” We read a lot of communication that point to expectations. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), State agencies and even Commercial Insurance payers bombard our billing office with all kind of communication about what they expect to be […]
What do I need to do? The Big Question As we talk with people in the industry, administrators and street providers alike, we field this question the most. “What do I need to write/not write in my Patient Care Report?” The companion discussion always centers on… “Can you provide me a “list” of things we […]
Shorter Timelines = Greater Dollar$ The time between… Rising costs and stale reimbursement is causing everyone in the EMS industry to take a long hard look at the bottom line. Today we’ll be focusing on three key parts of the billing timeline. Do you know what the time is that lapses between the incident and […]
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 mind,we thought we’d send out […]
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 ago. In the past we […]
Grading the Documentation Pop Quiz-Scenario 1 How did you do? Last week in this space we began a 3-part series that we entitled “Our Documentation Quiz.” If you missed it, we suggest that you skip down and read the post or you’ll be lost by reading this week’s post. We presented two hypothetical EMS scenarios […]
