Communication as Medical Billing Officer - Essay Example

As a billing specialist, some skills are necessary in the course of wok that make the specialist more effective in the course of his fiscal duties. This is otherwise known as the art of communication billing, which is extremely necessary in the course of work activities if such a person is going to be effective. Furthermore, such officers are expedient for the purposes of performing billing tasks which include following up on claims, studying coding changes as well as those in billing as well as creating and maintaining patient files. This paper is an analysis of the theories necessary in proving that communication is important in the field as a medical billing officer.

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Communication is important one needs to acquire medical billing knowledge as well as coding skills. While the professional may be able to understand these activities, the patients and other parties may not be as good in this work as the professional. As such, communication is very important as it ensures that there is sufficiency of information communicated to the other stakeholders and parties in the hospital work. Acquiring hands-on experience is important to the practitioner as this ensures more effectiveness at their work. As such, communication comprises one of the skills that enables the person to become effective in the sharing of information concerning the financial status of patients.

Furthermore, the patients may require to know what kind of plans that constitute the options available to them in the course of treatment. Different institutions offer different kinds of nursing and hospital care that come under different plans. For example, one hospital may offer a single payment method for a doctor for the number of patients he treats. On the other hand, accountable care controls may have been implemented in the hospital to ensure the better management of hospital funds. As such, communication is important for the billing officer as a skill for ensuring that patients are aware of different kinds of payment methods that are there in the hospital, and the plans that they could use for payment, including insurance, or cash payments (White, Moyer, Stern, & Katz, 2004).

In addition, communication is important for any financial officer within the institution because of the need for research, review and analysis skills that they should gather in the course of work. This is because variations in the economic situation affecting health policies and funding needs to be presented to the hospital management board for consideration of repercussions arising. This would be the duty of the financial officers, which requires that there be accurate and effective communication of such information. An important consideration that should be made is that a presentation of any kind of information would affect the kind of approaches and outcomes that the health institution would have are important and reflect on the communication skills of the financial officers. As such, communication is necessary for the presentation of research and market analysis that billing officers have done in the past.

Communication for the officer is also important especially because the person will be dealing with a lot of written and oral correspondence and communication. The billing personnel should be able to effectively interact with other members of staff such as medical personnel, insurance company representatives, and patients over a variety of ways including over the phone, by email, over mail or face-to-face. Furthermore, the billing officer should be able to handle payments, discuss patient and hospital accounts and resolve problems. As such, the development of communication skills is very important because of the inherent need to be able to communicate in clear, concise language as well as maintaining professionalism in the course of such communications. This is because the billing officer is working as an agent of the hospital and should strive to present the accounting information in the best way possible (Hunter & Thiebaud, 2003).

Finally, with the addition of technology, some things have become digitalized. The presentation of information is now being done differently, where financial officers need skills in presentation even in the written format for the ease of reading. Furthermore, the use of programs such as Oracle becomes vital for the purpose of billing. Consequently, it becomes important that the billing officer be able to use such software and communicate the outcomes of processes in order for the ease of understanding what the job is about. Consider a point of order where the financial statement of an institution is unknown because of poor communication. If not so, it would be impossible to know the course of action that needs to be taken in a financial situation that could salvage the situation.

In conclusion, communication for a financial officer in the medical field is important because of the patients need to know the kind of payment plans that need to be implemented, the financial position of the institution, for the purpose of communicating research and financial analyses conducted and ensuring the sufficiency and accuracy correspondence between different parties on financial matters.

References

Hunter, J., & Thiebaud, M. (2003). Telecommunications Billing Systems: implementing and upgrading for profitability. New York: McGraw-Hill.

White, C., Moyer, C., Stern, D., & Katz, S. (2004). A content analysis of email communication between patients and their providers: patients get the message. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 260-67.