Urgent Care Billing and the Current Scenario

Urgent care billing is as critical as the medical services that the urgent care centers provide. Often confused with primary care billing, it’s quite different and distinct.

As the name suggests, urgent care is among the most critical medical services. Slightly different from what we know as emergency departments in the hospitals, the growing number of urgent care centers in the United States of America indicates the rise in demand for such ambulatory care outside the traditional emergency room. As these centers are quite different in terms of operations, urgent care billing is also a very specialized area. Urgent care billing, even in the best centers with sophisticated facilities involves services that are paid for under primary-care billing codes. In urgent care billing, providers have to bill urgent care services under a separate taxpayer identification number in case they are also providing primary care services.

Urgent Care Billing: Characteristics

As discussed, although urgent care billing seems a bit like primary care billing, it observes some distinct features or characteristics. Some of these are:

• Urgent care billing is problem focused

• Copays are usually on the higher side

• Insurances reluctant to reimburse some preventive and routine cares like vaccinations

Dependence in Distress

Looks pretty complex? Well, it is and thus, most urgent care centers run on low financial margins balancing the care and the billing part. To rub salt on the wound, adherence to stringent guidelines make it really hard for the company staffs.  It’s a real-time burden for the medical practitioners to cope with this extra burden. A thorough knowledge of accounts receivable recovery is required to properly understand urgent care billing. In the regular day-to-day scenario to treat patients on urgent basis, it’s too demanding from the in-house staff. As an obvious measure, urgent care centers are outsourcing their urgent care billing operations to ensure cleaner claims and quicker settlements.

Some of the advantages of outsourcing your urgent care billing processes are:

 Accurate checks and balances with 99% overall accuracy

 Dedicated managers with experienced team for fastest service

 Reduction in operational cost by 80%

 Excellent referrals

 No hidden cost

 100% HIPAA compliance

 Experience to serve more than 100 clients

 Low fee standalone services offered

So, if your urgent care center is diagnosed with any such billing ailments notified above, it’s high time you get an urgent care billing specialist. There are few companies in the US that are providing top class services. Sun Knowledge Inc. is one among them and with proper search, you might end up getting a few more urgent care billing service provider with equivalent competency.

Author's Note

The author of this article usually writes blogs, white-papers and articles on the topics e.g. urgent care billing, medical billing etc. in the United States for healthcare industries.