Despite billions being invested in COVID-19 vaccines and government agencies strongly encouraging everyone who qualifies to get vaccinated, all COVID-19 vaccines being administered in the US have been approved only under an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA). That changed on August 23, when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Pfizer’s vaccine for anyone 16…
Taking off our masks and enjoying freedom from social distancing was a welcome break after the restrictions of 2020. But due to the rapidly spreading variant of the virus that causes COVID-19, the CDC says we all need to go back to wearing masks in public if we are in “areas of substantial and high…
While it may seem like an efficient way to get more done with less effort, billing for services provided by someone else is not allowed. “Pass-through billing” is the term for submitting a claim for anything not delivered by the submitting physician or someone in their direct employ. A common example is when practitioners have…
On June 9, 2021, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced an increase in the total payment amount for at-home vaccination for administering the COVID-19 vaccine to Medicare beneficiaries who would encounter difficulty in being vaccinated otherwise. While the COVID-19 vaccine is readily available to most people at their pharmacy, doctor’s office, or…
Without a doubt, claim denials are a: a pain in the neck, b: a major source of revenue loss for practitioners, and c: a cause of stress for medical businesses. They do not, however, have to be a common occurrence. Outsourcing medical billing to a professional billing company has proven to greatly reduce denials, but…
Concierge medicine is not a new concept, but it seems to be getting a lot more attention lately. It’s no secret that job satisfaction among doctors is decreasing, and that is one of the leading causes for the change. If you became a doctor because you were inspired by shows like Marcus Welby M.D., then…
Now that the age for administration of Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine has been approved for adolescents aged 12 to 15, new questions are being raised, including who will get it and how to make distribution most equitable. Children are less susceptible to the disease caused by the virus, but they are likely to spread it to…
Various online reports indicate that two-thirds to three-quarters of medical bills in 2020 contained errors. With those bills routinely totaling thousands, tens of thousands, and even hundreds of thousands of dollars, it certainly makes sense to check them for errors. The medical coding and billing system is complicated and even trained billers and coders make…