Mental Health Billing Services
Medical billing has been extremely complicated due to its unique set of challenges, marred by regulations and billing changes. Physicians have to deal with types of services offered, pre-authorizations, concerns in unbundling, office staff timing, and size; it’s estimated that on average a mental health physicians loses close to 20 percent of revenue each quarter due to complicated regulatory.
For Legion Healthcare Solutions (LHS) denial management has been the major focus, setting mental health facility providers to focus on behavioral health rather than on the regulations and billing. Most of the mental health physicians are solo practitioners or small practices that deal with a resource crunch, LHS steps forward to deal with administrative tasks of billing.
“Mental health if we can say is mostly ignored by both federal regulators who control Medicare and private insurance companies. Hence most mental health physicians are usually solo or small practices that lack the administrative resources and solutions. LHS can be just the right solution for your practice then, we provide an end-to-end solution for all our mental health clients.”
– CEO at Legion Healthcare Solutions (LHS)
To reduce the cost of payments for mental health many private insurance companies have standardized the mental health payment, capping the number of visits, time period for each visit, type of visit. This makes prior authorization even more important for your mental health facility.
Verification of Benefits
Legion understands the importance of each patient visit, hence before every patient's visit, the insurance plan and benefits are verified. This can take few days or even slow down your practice, it gives the benefit of knowing the billing procedure. We conduct a verification of benefits before any treatment and services are provided. Verification of benefits even assists in patient care, as you can communicate with the patient about the cost insurance covers and what needs to be out-of-pocket. Most insurance companies have online portal where healthcare facilities can check the covered treatments.
Making Coding and Documentation a Priority
When dealing with any type of medical billing it’s imperative that coding and documentation steps are followed. Legion understands this and employs a team of certified coders who constantly go through the training and scrutiny process for efficient coding. For behavioral health practitioners, there are two types of codes: psychiatric codes and E/M codes. E/M codes are used when evaluating the new medical issue. The E/M codes need three documentation issues evaluated: history, examination, and medical decision.
Claim Submission
The majority of mental healthcare facilities that work solo usually do self-submission of claim-making errors and losing out on many dollars. It’s just not coding, Legion understands this and deploys billing experts to go through claims before submission. Various insurance companies have a preferred format when it comes to billing.