Back to Work
Published January 20, 2012 | 
Now that the holidays are over it is time we go back to work and prepare for a new year. And that means that almost everyone will owe another yearly deductible, may have changed insurances, may owe more for copays and most offices renew every patient’s signatures on the billing and authorization forms. The Front Office, Admission, Registration people will need to be spend a little bit more time with each patient to ensure that they have updated copies of the patient’s insurance cards, their photo ids, addresses and phone numbers.
Surprisingly, more and more people are changing their phone numbers on a fairly regular basis and holidays are the time that most phone companies are offering better deals to switch services. And, more and more people are turning off their land-lines and just using cell-phones as their main contact numbers. Updating a person’s contact information is very important not only for the Front Office Personnel to call and confirm appointments but the doctors and nurses may need to call the patient with results and, of course, the billing and collection people may need to call the patient about their balances.
When asking for a patient’s deductible payment prior to services you will need to know if they have received services anywhere else prior to the appointment with your office. Some patients may have already gone to the Emergency Room for services and depending on the timing, their billing practices, and even the deductible amount the patient may have already met their deductible with that visit. Most of your patients will have changed their insurances and/or their copayment amounts may have increased, as with everything else.
You will need to encourage patients to confirm that they are still within their network prior to making an appointment with your office. And if not, the least you can do is confirm it for them. There is nothing worse that finding out when you arrive or when you leave your appointment that you owe more than you have planned. Training your scheduling personnel in helping the patients with this information prior to scheduling saves a lot of misunderstanding and bad public relations.
Happy Holidays
Published December 10, 2011 | Happy Holidays to all of our readers here at the Medical Office Clerk Informational Blog. We hope you and yours have a safe and happy one. Don’t forget to make those New Year’s Resolutions. Your comments and suggestions from our legitimate subscribers have been interesting. For all those spammers out there: TAKE THE YEAR OFF!
This year has been a hard one for most of us with turbulent and stressful times and situations. We hope you will take some time and spend it with your family and friends. When the new year starts we resolve to post more articles, keep up with our education and seek out new opportunities for growth in our chosen field!
See Ya Next Year!
What is that Smell
Published May 27, 2011 | Here is a subject that is not really discussed and that is smells that you have to deal with at work. Being in a medical office setting we have to deal with a variety of things and keep our composure. Most of us have to deal with sick patients and they may have their own kinds of smells depending on the sickness. And we have to be careful of what perfume, powders and lotions we use because what we wear can affect our patients and our co-workers. Sick patients have compromised immune systems and perfumes, lotions and powders will make them feel worse and unable to breath sometimes. In an enclosed office your co-workers can be affected as well. The best practice is to not wear anything at all. Always go to work with just the smell of your soap.
There are a variety of different articles on the web discussing this very subject. Most are studies about how perfume adversely affect asthma patients but most of them discuss the chemicals in perfumes and lotions that people are not aware of that can affect their health as well as their patients.
http://www.livestrong.com/article/228365-perfume-health-risks/
And here is a video from a doctor about his office policy of his patients and staff not wearing perfumes and why:
Patient Access Reps
Published March 15, 2010 | Are you a doctor’s office or hospital patient access rep? Maybe you are called something else by your employer such as a Medical Office Clerk or Insurance Clerk or maybe even an Admission Clerk or Registrar. Whatever the title we all do about the same thing. We collect demographic and insurance information about patients and input them into some kind of software program. Some of us do more than that such as post charges, collect co-pays and coinsurance amounts from patients and some of us even bill insurance companies or follow-up with the patient’s insurance to get them to pay the claims that have been billed to them. A few will even have to call the insurance companies to get pre-certification for a procedure. Whatever your duties are you need to know that you are “The Face of a Medical Practice” . And by that I mean you will generally be the first and possibly the last person that patient sees when getting medical services. You will set the tone of the visit for the patient and you could actually get a patient to return for future services or end up losing that patient for the clinic or hospital if you do not do your job correctly.
Most of us do not have specific training in our field. There is no college courses for our particular specialty. There are so vocational courses that can be taken and we will post another article on that soon enough. You can even take a certification exam as discussed in the CHAA Exam posting previously. Mostly, we are taught how to do our jobs by someone already doing the job. On-the-job training is the best way to learn how to do a new job, if you have the right trainer. So much depends on the trainer actually have the done the job, done it well and be willing to impart that knowledge to the trainee. But you must also be willing to learn some stuff on your own as well. To that end I would like to suggest, again, that you find and bookmark websites that give you updated information on insurances, medical regulations that affect patient access reps and possibly find a local source such as a state agency that keeps up on the current trends in our area of expertise. To start click on some of our links and bookmark them. Read through the materials on each and check back on them about once a month or so to see if anything new has been posted. We would even suggest that if they offer a newsletter or updating email service that you sign up for that as well.
Remember, learning some new everyday should be your motto or mantra!