Educator
Medical billing is the job of getting a practice paid for the care it gave: the claim, the code, the payer's answer, and the argument when the answer is wrong. It is learnable, it is in demand, and almost nobody teaches it from the chair where it is actually done.
The lessons here are written by a working billing manager with thirty-seven years in medical billing, who runs the billing for a psychiatric practice in South Florida and wrote the piece on downcoding that ran in the PAHCOM Journal. Not a course vendor. Someone who does the work every day and is willing to show you how.
The lessons are being written now, in this order. Each one is posted in full as it is finished. The outline is hers; nothing here is padded.
Preparation: is this the work you want?
Deciding before you start. Phone etiquette and work ethics. The tools you need on day one: two books, the current ICD-10-CM and CPT code books, new or second-hand.
Full lesson coming.
The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, and why it matters to a biller
Public Law 95-109. What it allows, what it forbids, and why the person on the phone about a balance is bound by it.
Full lesson coming.
Understanding HIPAA
What it protects, what you may say and to whom, and the habits that keep a practice out of trouble.
Full lesson coming.
The note has to earn the code. This is the checklist a payer reads it against.
Office visit levels and psychotherapy codes on one page, with the times.
Every code you will touch in a week, printed and taped to the monitor.
Ten visits. Pick the code, see why, see what you missed.
The part of the job nobody explains until a claim comes back short.
Reading gets you the vocabulary. The job gets learned at a desk with real claims. The billing manager who writes these lessons can offer temporary training positions, on site, at a working practice: you sit with the person who does it, on the claims that came in that morning. Numbers are limited and the fit matters, so it starts with a conversation.
Tell us where you are starting from and what you are after. It goes straight to the billing manager.