Professional Coders Alert: Drive Home Your Reimbursements For Patient No-shows

By Author: Celena Rose
Total Articles: 146
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Increased deductibles, unemployment jumps, and the current economy affecting patients' abilities to pay for services, professional coders face challenging situations where patients cancel appointments or simply do not turn up. If you don't collect for no-show appointments when you're allowed, your practice could see a significant reimbursement loss.


Professional Coders - Follow these expert tips to ensure you make the most of patient no-shows.


Notification: Ask your patients to sign and date the form when they first join your practice, as they would do when they initially sign your privacy or financial policies. You can incorporate the no-show policy into your financial policy. You can warn patients that they have violated the policy by phone or in letter form.

Be proactive: Send reminder notices or make appointment reminder phone calls to the patients. Do check your electronic record systems if it generates automatic phone or e-mail reminders.

Watch for Payer Differences: Check ...
... with your payers to see what limitations you may have on billing patients, and whether you can charge a fee to patients who do not show up for appointments.

State Laws: Check your state's laws to see if there are any laws prohibiting you from billing for no-show visits.

Medicare clarification: Starting from Oct. 2007, CMS changed the policy and since then you've been able to charge Medicare patients if they miss an appointment, but with a stipulation - your no-show charge policy needs to apply to both your Medicare and non-Medicare patients

Make a Note in the Patient's Chart: When a patient does not show up for an appointment or cancels an appointment on short notice, you should make a note in her medical record - to give you an accurate count to tackle legal issues.


Professional coders will see additional benefits in tracking no-shows, because no-shows typically mean lost revenue for the practice.


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