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When you're dealing with the public, you're going to have problems in the form of complaints. It's a fact of life that everybody needs to deal with, not only in the medical billing field but everywhere. But medical billing has its own little quirks that are unlike any other business in the world. We're going to cover some of these quirks in this article. Hopefully, if you are a medical billing representative, you will be prepared to handle some of these unique situations.

One of the most common customer complaints that patients will have is when they expect to have a bill that they were given for a medical service paid and it's not paid. Worse than that, they're not even told that the bill wasn't paid and they end up getting a nasty letter in the mail demanding payment. The patient is now sitting at home scratching his or her head, wondering what the heck happened. So the first person they call up is the medical biller. They want to know why this bill wasn't paid.

This is where the answer gets a little complicated. See, medical billing is not the fastest service in the world. For example. You can, as a medical biller, submit a bill for patient John Doe to Medicare on January 1, 2007 and Medicare may not get around to even consider paying it until 30 days later. In the meantime, however, the bill is expected to be paid by the patient within that 30 day period. So this is what happens. Medicare finally checks the bill on February 1, 2007. In the meantime, the 30 days have passed and so a letter goes out to that patient on that same day. In the meantime, Medicare is probably going to pay that bill within the next 7 days. So the patient calls up and complains, the biller says he or she will look into it and by the time anything is even done, the check arrives in the mail between the 10th and the 15th of the month. All of that for nothing.

As a medical biller, it is your duty to make the patient aware of the lag time in billing and assure the patient that the check will probably be coming from the insurance carrier in a week or so. In the meantime, however, you should call up the carrier and make sure that the bill was received and that they are in the process of making payment.

Another complaint, though not as common, is that the patient calls up complaining that they are being billed for services not performed. In this case what you, as the biller, need to do is check the records as supplied by the doctor and follow up to make sure that you received the right information. If not, you'll need to make changes in the system and rebill the patient for the right services.

# posted by Medical Information : 1:12 AM