Do you have a certification or degree in health care industry? Do you have excellent communication skills? Are you good in maintaining records? If a ‘yes’ is your answers to all these questions, then you are the ideal contender for a medical billing consultant job. Keep reading further to know more about the various responsibilities of a Medicare biller’s profile.
Responsibilities
The primary job responsibilities of medical billing consultants are to keep and maintain an updated record of patients' medical diagnosis and history, procedure codes, and other information required for patient’s billing. Additionally, they are also responsible for tracking outstanding balances, billing health care providers or patients for the medical services provided. They make payment arrangements with the patients, collect previous dues and issue no dues certificates at the time of discharge.
Not only this, they also work with physicians or health care professionals if the patients’ information is not accurate or unclear to enter and code the information in the database. Such information is vital for the hospital and the patients as the information is helpful in financial reimbursements.
Along with Medicare billing and coding, a Medicare biller contacts patients for various information, filing paper-work, medical-records; helps in scheduling appointments, and handles phone communication in the hospitals or physicians clinic.
Remuneration
Medicare billers enjoy good salary packages. However, the packages vary depending on the location where you are working and the employer with whom you are working. It also depends on the responsibilities, which you are expected to carry out on your job. Indeed.com listed a national average salary of $35,000 per year for the medical assistants in the health industry in March 2010.
Industry updates
As per the statistics of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), “20 percent growth in health assistant jobs is expected between 2008 and 2018.” And the reasons stated behind this hike are: a need for maintaining electronic medical records, increase in the need of medical tests and procedures due to high rise in the population worldwide.