home based medical billing businesses?

[TedH71]

Are there any legimate (sp?) home based medical billing companies you can get started with? Any pros and cons? I've heard that if you do paper claims you charge more but if you do e-claims you charge less because all you do is being a middleman and no typing of the claims. Any advice is much appreciated!

[Deb862]

Unfortunately, I don't know much about the medical billing from home thing, although I am an at-home medical transcriptionist and am aware of at-home medical coding for insurance purposes. I don't know if the "billing" you are speaking of is the same thing as coding but it sounds pretty similar.

For medical coding, as for medical transcription, there are courses that you can take online to learn the job. It does require a bit of time and financial investment initially but, to me at least, the payoff is absolutely worth it. While I am in transcription and love it, I have also thought about going into coding as well as medical coding is a hugely booming occupation and probably will be for the foreseeable future. One must definitely take a course and be very accurate because of the legal ramifications from billing insurance companies, etc., incorrectly.

I have much information about medical transcription as well as medical coding. If you would like more, please feel free to PM me and I'd be happy to go into more detail.

[PBPitcher]

Could you please elaborate on that the difference is between Medical Coding and Medical Transcriptioning? I am two shakes of a lambs tail away from signing up for online MT courses...done my research, found a reliable online school, and have the money in the checking account to transfer!! But after seeing this thread, I thought I would ask first about the medical coding aspect of working at home!

Thanks!

[Deb862]

I PMd you regarding this.

[TedH71]

Medical transcriptioning requires you to hear what doctors say while medical coding is typing in what they wrote. I could be wrong but I'm deaf so I don't think I would be able to do the transcriptioning

[Deb862]

OK, I see. So basically then I guess I was trying to ascertain when you spoke of medical "billing" if you were indeed speaking of medical coding.

As for medical coding, as I said one usually needs to take a course to get certified in order to be hired for that because of the legal ramifications. Most coding is done in-house in hospitals but the profession is moving towards more coders being able to work from home currently. There are lots of online courses you could take but only a few that would be what I would call really "worthy" so beware.

[Ken Scharabok]

I do believe work-at-home medical billing is a leading scam. Thoroughly check it out first.

[donsgal]

Originally Posted by TedH71

Are there any legimate (sp?) home based medical billing companies you can get started with? Any pros and cons? I've heard that if you do paper claims you charge more but if you do e-claims you charge less because all you do is being a middleman and no typing of the claims. Any advice is much appreciated!

I have done medical billing and coding in an office setting and basically you have a computer program where you "fill in the blanks" and send them off via the internet. There are several companies out there that sell this software, although, if I am not mistaken, the company that does the processing will give you the software free.

Anyway. The most important thing is to learn the ICDM and CPT-9 codes, which is very difficult to master. I've known people who have been in the business for more than 5 years and still do not always feel comfortable coding a diagnosis. There are many courses you can take, as well as obtaining certification as a coder. If you seriously want to do this, it is not a quick or easy road to follow.

I believe also, that insurance companies are no longer taking forms that are manually filled out because they are all electronically read now. Manual forms are too labor intensive to process. Again, this is what I have heard and I am not certain if it is correct or not.

Medical billing is a GREAT profession to get into. But if you want to work from home you have to have additional skills such as being able to market yourself to physicians in your area, sales skills, graphics arts skills (for flyers and other advertising medium), good grammatical skills and others. You have to have the discipline to go out there and get the business and then you have to have the discipline to get the work done in a professional and timely manner, which is often the hardest part of working from home.

Donsgal