work your way through the FA0 record, if you read medical billing is like a copy of" War and Peace "." Okay, maybe it's not so bad, but it is still the most comprehensive record of the entire NSF 3 / 01 specifications, and without them, nobody had a clue what in the invoice. In this installment we review this record with the 18th Field

FA0 field 18, position 82 - 85, is the service units. This is probably one of the most important areas throughout the FA0 record and deserves a full explanation.

Units of service are in English, the number of articles, in particular, into account. Now, while the simple sounds, in reality, it becomes very complicated. Let us explain.

For most articles, the units of service are very simple in its reporting. For example, let's say that someone buys a wheelchair. You buy a wheelchair, so that the units of service would be 1st Let us say that you sell a box of test strips, running through the strip into account, but you're still just a sale. Here is where it is more complicated. Depending on who you are, billing, payroll some contributors to 1 box and the cost of the box, while others, because they need to know the actual number of units, ask for a change. To do this, you must specify the number of stripes in the box and multiply them by the number of boxes you sell. Then, the number goes in the service units.

Rental article nor complicated. With a rental item, even if you do not sell anything, the units of the service still be reported. In the case of a wheelchair, this is simply because you rent a wheelchair. But what if you hire, together with an oxygen tank? The tank is a unit of service, because it is a tank, but the oxygen-units must be calculated on the basis of how much oxygen is in the tank. This calculation is based on where you various billing.

The units of service is one of the main reasons that the claims get denied. The reason is that many parts of the software does not know how to calculate it correctly to the needs of each client that it billing. There are no hard and fast numbers on the percentage of claims that are denied because the service units of the error, especially when it comes to the settlement of oxygen, but the number is quite high.

Also, it should be noted that the price range that we do not get to have on the service units in the area of 18th In other words, if you have 1 box of billing test, then the price for 1 box. However, if you strip 250 Billing, then the price for 250-stripes. The difference is in the rule that a box is sold at a discount.

In the next installment in this article, we move on to the field point 19

Michael Russell

Your independent guide to Medical Billing