• E-mail
• Print
• RSS

Education tips for SNF billers: Self-training amid constant industry change

Billing Alert for Long-Term Care, October 1, 2009

This is an excerpt from a member only article. To read the article in its entirety, please login or subscribe to Billing Alert for Long-Term Care.

Responsible for accurate reimbursement, long-term care billers serve as one of the most important components in any SNF. But despite their significance, billers are frequently hired without prior business office experience and require no unique certification. Because of this, on-the-job training is critical.

In-house training over the course of a new biller’s first few weeks establishes a familiarity with the necessary forms, rules, and software. However, it takes months to fully comprehend all of the position’s tasks, which places tremendous value on repetition and forces billers to continuously educate themselves. Constant regulatory changes further require billers to be able to evolve.

“You can only go so far with training. The rest of it you kind of have to learn on your own and know what works for you,” says Hillary Larson, finance administrative assistant and billing specialist at Jackson (MI) County Medical Care Facility.

To understand and manage the vast amounts of beneficiary information, facility policies, and billing regulations, there are a handful of resources that billers can take advantage of, as well as relying on a few lesserknown references and helpful techniques.

This is an excerpt from a member only article. To read the article in its entirety, please login or subscribe to Billing Alert for Long-Term Care.

• E-mail to a Colleague
• Print
• RSS
• Archive