What is Medical Billing ?

Medical Billing has turned around in a big way nowadays. There was a time when the patient used to go to doctor, get the treatment for any ailment and pay the doctor’s bill. Until few years back, medical insurance was significantly complicated; it was a rare event, the doctor had to raise the paper bill towards his treatment charges and submit it to the private, Medicare or Medicaid insurance provider. We are much aware of the fact that such paper bills could get lost very easily. Anyways, those days are history now, yet there are a few doctors who still believe in the orthodox procedures and use paper bills for their treatment charges. Most of the doctors have today started using the latest technologies and begun raising electronic Medical Bills to their patients for the treatments provided by them.

Electronic Medical Billing is a paperless billing process; wherein the bill is printed out after making the entries related to the patient’s treatment in the computer system and handed over to the patient by his doctor. Such electronic Medical Billing incorporates all the related information like, the insurance provider’s data, your detailed treatment charges, medicines and other incidental expenses incurred by the clinic while extending your treatments. All these information are essential for claiming the medical expenses incurred by the clinic, from the patient’s medical insurance providers.

The electronic Medical Billing is usually prepared by entering all the necessary data in the computer system with the help of the specialized Medical Billing software program and the fed information is then electronically submitted to the carrier by means of a device called a modem. The modem is such an electronic device that uses the telephone line for transmitting the received information just like that of a fax machine. In the fax machine, a piece of prepared document or the Medical Bill is inserted in the unit. Its copy is electronically prepared and transmitted through the connected telephone line to the remote fax machine held by the insurance provider and prints out the identical copy of the document at that end. But in case of the electronic Medical Billing, there is no requirement of paper at all. The particular information is typed out into the computer system and thereafter the installed software takes those data itself for transmitting them over to the carrier via modem.

Such data are mostly sent in some specific format so that the carrier is able to read the data properly. This sort of typical format is known as NSF format that has been standardized by all such carriers. However, specific computer program is required to be made for each individual carrier as in spite of the standards formats, its not necessary that every carrier uses every field in the format. Due to this when specific fields are transmitted which the carrier is not using, the claim may get rejected by the carrier.