Hospital Plans Vs Medical Aid

When choosing between an entry-level hospital plan and a more comprehensive form of medical aid, cost is likely to be at the forefront of your mind. In an ideal world you wouldn't have to worry about the price of your medical aid, so that you could choose to have the best and most comprehensive plan available. The reality, though, is that you have a set income and other bills to pay, and if you have a family it can be even tougher to stretch your finances to pay for your medical aid coverage. Thus, you have to look into each type of plan and work out what you can afford.

A basic hospital plan will cover most day-to-day expenses incurred while you're in hospital. However, you could find that the plan doesn't cover certain aspects of your hospital stay. You may have to spend extra on receiving rehabilitative care or psychiatric treatment and the trouble is that when you're sick you are not always in a position to choose what kind of care you receive. Consequently, you could find yourself receiving treatment that you will end up having to pay out of your savings. Unfortunately, if you have no savings you could easily end up in debt.

A more comprehensive medical aid plan ensures that all sorts of services, treatments and facilities are open to you without you having to pay extra. Once you have a comprehensive medical aid plan you pay into it and can then claim back any money related to your hospital treatment. Depending on the type of plan you opt for, you could also have other medical expenses paid for that are not necessarily related to a hospital stay, such as trips to see your doctor or dentist and for medication that you have been prescribed.

Thus, the main benefit of choosing a comprehensive medical aid plan is that you don't have to worry about the future of your health, since it will be well taken care of if you were ever to develop a serious health problem, such as cancer, or injure yourself by breaking your leg, for instance, you won't have to worry about the financial side of your treatment. You won't have to rely on state healthcare facilities and you won't be left with mountains of debt after you leave hospital. The only trouble is that you have to pay more in terms of your monthly contributions.

If you have a large family and you want your spouse and children to be covered, as well as yourself, a significant proportion of your salary could end up going towards your healthcare provision. There is a great deal of uncertainty about the future and you never know what is going to happen. For all you know, you and your whole family could remain in perfect health, leading you to question whether a medical aid plan is really worth it. However, there is also a chance that someone could require emergency treatment, in which case it is important to have that protection there.

Ultimately, the chances are that whether you choose a basic hospital plan or a more comprehensive form of medical aid will depend on your financial situation, because if money isn't an issue you may decide to go with the plan that covers everything.

Bare Essentials of Medical Insurance   Medical Insurance Quotes - Things That Can Affect Your Premiums   How To Keep Up With So Many Changes in Medical Billing   Maximize Your Medisoft! (Unknown and Underused Functions of Medisoft)   Is the Job Growth Affected by the Existence of Software That Handles Medical Billing and Coding?   

Medical Coding Education - General Job Description

A medical coding specialist is someone who works in a hospital, clinic or office. They provide support and submit medical claims to insurance companies to make sure the hospital or doctor are paid for the services they provided to patients. This article will give you a breakdown of the overall responsibilities of a medical coder.

As a professional in the healthcare industry, it is important that you do everything in your power to learn as much about the medical insurance field. By taking courses and getting a medical coding education, you should have no problem grasping the basic knowledge of the field. Medical coding and billing is a pretty straight-forward job and once you learn the basics, the rest will come naturally. This is a field that will have very little change over the years, especially with most of the work now being done by advanced medical billing software.

Medical coders deal directly with private insurance companies and various government agencies who pay medical claims such as Medicare for example. The medical coding department is solely responsible for the collection of co-payments from patients directly by calling them and offering billing options. Responsibilities will also include,administrative duties, verifying signatures, keeping up to date on insurance policies and the latest information. A major benefit of being a medical coder is that you have the ability to work from home or at the very least work on different shifts. This can be very beneficial if you have a family or need to be flexible. However, to work from home, you will have to prove to the company that your are up to par and able to manage yourself. It is easier said than done in most cases. Another skill you may require to do is bookkeeping. Sometimes, especially in offices and private practices, you will have to wear different hats as you are working in a smaller outfit. This line of work is not very different from the medical coding itself but it really helps to know as it makes you more valuable.

Becoming a medical coder is a great career choice and provides you with job stability in a rapidly expanding industry. As mentioned above the salary range can only go higher as the healthcare industry is growing faster as the baby boomers retire. If you are good on the phone and have solid "attention-to-detail" skills, this field is one to consider.

Bare Essentials of Medical Insurance   Medical Insurance Quotes - Things That Can Affect Your Premiums   How To Keep Up With So Many Changes in Medical Billing   Maximize Your Medisoft! (Unknown and Underused Functions of Medisoft)   Is the Job Growth Affected by the Existence of Software That Handles Medical Billing and Coding?   

Medical Billing - Front End Strategies

A recent article in the New York Times by Ann Carrns, Medical Debt Cited More Often in Bankruptcies, discusses the increase to 20 percent from 12 to 13 percent for those citing medical debt as a factor in seeking financial counseling. She also goes on to point out that people do not want to default on medical payments. In fact, instead of not paying their healers, they will pay their medical bills with new credit cards. However, those cards may carry high interest charges especially if patient has poor credit.

In addition to that, co-pays and deductibles will do nothing but increase regardless of any health care reform implementation. All the more reason to develop sound front end strategies designed to make sure the patients understand their payments precisely and to make sure you make it easy and manageable for patients to pay. Here are three ways to do that:

• Use historical payments, insurance payouts and actual treatment data to develop accurate patient responsibility costs. This will increase your point of service collections and reduce days in accounts receivable.

• Verify patient information accuracy. Compare self-reported patient information with data on various financial information databases. This will help avoid potential claim denial errors and improve the efficiency of your registration process.

• Obtain a financial profile on your patient that can be summarized into meaningful healthcare metrics. This will increase your point-of-service collections and also reduce days in accounts receivable. You can probably receive this information by judicious and efficient use of your current system. You may have to add some modules but the technology is available.

For example, on one healthcare system, you can route patient identity information via a standard HL7 feed from your registration system. The patient financial summary compares the registration data against multiple datasets. The patient's credit report is used to calculate financial estimates. They include the probability of financial aid and collection.

You can also establish thresholds such as the Federal Poverty Level percentage cutoffs. This can be used to see if the patient qualifies for Medicaid.

The system can also generate an accurate estimate of patient costs by using historical expenses, contract modeling and insurance verification transactions.

Tap into your system to see what it can do to assist in creating a powerful front-end strategy. It's may be more robust than you think.

If not, or if you want to go in another direction, consider a web-based system that can provide all the information mentioned above. You can receive real-time access to the financial and demographic status of the patient. Predictive modeling can also be used to determine which accounts are the most collectible.

Establish Upfront Payment Plans

Using all of the information developed by your system, have a talk with the patient as soon as possible. Determine eligibility for charity care, accurate co-pay amounts and deductible ceilings. Be aggressive on upfront collection. But if that isn't possible, establish a pay plan.

For example, a person went to a chiropractor for spinal adjustments. The total charge for multiple treatments was $2,000. They patient couldn't pay for that upfront but want to be relieved of her pain.

The chiropractor established a 6 month payment schedule and took a 10% payment at the point of service. He set up a monthly withdrawal from her account that allowed her to pay over six months even though the treatment would be done after four.

You will need to adapt your medical collection strategy to the health care system changes and adjust to the current economic climate to retain a healthy cash flow.

Bare Essentials of Medical Insurance   Medical Insurance Quotes - Things That Can Affect Your Premiums   How To Keep Up With So Many Changes in Medical Billing   Maximize Your Medisoft! (Unknown and Underused Functions of Medisoft)   Is the Job Growth Affected by the Existence of Software That Handles Medical Billing and Coding?   General Overview of the Medical Billing and Coding Process