Dexios only bills radiology for hospital-based groups and imaging centers.
Why is this important? Isn’t medical billing the same for everyone?
You may be surprised, but it really does matter. While there are many examples, let’s look at MIPS. One of the big matters this year is the issue of radiology being patient-facing or non-patient-facing. Is your generic billing company going to be on top of the nuances of this radiology-specific issue? How about a few years ago when Place of Service was a primary concern? Is a generic billing company going to consider where the place of service, even the date of service, comes into play?
I was working with a small radiology group last year who previously had a billing company whose primary client base was pathology. By the time the billing company figured out PQRS measures for their few radiology clients, they had missed the bar for the year. As a result, they were penalized. This is far more common than you might think.
Related: Are you losing money with your current billing company?
I’ve always wondered how generic companies keep abreast of everything happening in radiology. Dexios religiously participates in the Radiology Business Management Association (RBMA) forums, annual conferences and trade publications. If you are billing just five specialties, how can you make the time to attend and read all that information? You probably don’t.
Radiology-Specific Coding
What about coding? Are your coders radiology specialists or coding generalists? Do they know the difference between coding an IDTF and a hospital-based group? Are they trained well enough to coach the radiologists on dictation so that they are getting credit for all the work they perform?
Another thing I have noticed doing radiology group billing audits is that the groups who have a generic billing company who bill multiple specialties tend to use terminology differently than the RBMA specifies in its AR guidelines. Why should this matter so much to you? If you are using non-standard terminology you cannot accurately compare yourselves to your peers for benchmarking. If you cannot compare yourselves, how will you ever know if you are being given a great service or totally being ripped off?
Just this past week I reviewed another group’s end of month reports. They were using a generic company who offshored most of their work. The report didn’t contain even the most basic information like contractual adjustments or Days in AR. This is despite the End of Month report being 25 pages long complete with pretty graphics. If you can’t wow them with your performance, you might as well cover your performance in tons of meaningless, yet pretty data. When I calculated Days in AR is ended up being in the high 90s.
100% Radiology Focused Billing
In conclusion, being 100% dedicated to the specialty of radiology in the billing world is important. It lets you know that they speak your language and understand your specialty. It lets you know that they are as dedicated to your chosen specialty as you are. Dexios is 100% focused and committed on radiology billing.
To find out if your generic billing company is doing you justice, contact Dexios today.