ASC Coding, Billing & Collections

The following article was written by Carol Ciluffo, vice president of revenue cycle management for Pinnacle III. Learn more about Pinnacle III.

Remittance began last week for HIPAA 5010, the new standard that regulates the electronic submission of specific healthcare transactions, according to AAPC.

Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick is deciding the fate of a bill that would require insurers to pay private ambulance companies for the cost of transport, according to the Gloucester Times.

Surgery Center of Oklahoma in Oklahoma City costs a fraction of what hospitals charge for cash-paying patients, according to an Examiner report.

Earlier this year, Dan Connolly, MHS, ARM, vice president of payor contracting for Pinnacle III, noticed something had changed. Like everyone else in the industry, he had heard for years that payors were cracking down on providers, pushing cripplingly low…

National medical debt bill collector Accretive Health was fined $2.5 million by the state of Minnesota, according to the Brainerd Dispatch.

Health insurance companies — including the state's largest provider, BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee — mailed nearly $50 million in rebates to almost 500,000 individual policy holders in compliance with the Affordable Care Act, according to the Times Free Press.

By analyzing its coding and billing cycles, Memorial Medical Center in Port Lavaca, Texas, realized a revenue increase of $50,000 in one month, according to Healthcare Finance News.

A recently opened Baltimore command center will house federal government-hired employees attempting to crack down on suspicious healthcare filings, including for Medicare and Medicaid payments, according to an Associated Press report.

Downer's Grove, Ill.-based debt collector Optimum Outcomes announced it will acquire Patient Financial Solutions and Absolute Collection Service, businesses that work with account resolution and revenue cycle management, according to insideARM.com.