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The Importance of Understanding Billing and Reimbursement for Physician Assistant Practice

PA Reimbursement and Billing Sessions to Review from AAPA 2019 Conference

It can be difficult to make it to an annual conference; not only is there a monetary hurdle, there can be scheduling conflicts as well. If you didn’t make it to the AAPA conference there was some great information specific to PA practice. Two lectures that are important to PA practice were Medicare Reimbursement and Out-patient Billing.

If you want to negotiate your salary it is important to understand how you provide value to an organization. Most PAs did not go into the field to worry about billing practices, but it is an important topic to be familiar. If you know how much you’re bringing into a practice you will be better prepared to negotiate your salary.

It’s not just important for your salary and negotiating, it is also important to understand so you can keep out of legal trouble. As the provider of a given service the PA is the one that is ultimately responsible for the billed service. Even though there might be a billing department, if things are billed incorrectly, the PA can be held responsible for it.

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There are a lot of rules about billing, but the lectures at the 2019 AAPA conference in Denver, Colorado gave a very good overview of the billing process. I did not learn much about coding and billing in PA school, so opportunities like these provide more education on these topics.

Two topics that were covered and are often confused are incident-to billing and shared visit billing. The lectures explained the difference and when to use each of them. They also discussed the differences in billing private practice out-patient, compared to hospital work. Not all employers understand the different billing options, so if you want to maximize your earning potential it is important to understand these topics.

You can access past AAPA conference CME on their website in the CME on demand section. Billing and reimbursement is not everyone’s favorite CME topic, but it is one of the most important topics to understand to have a successful practice.

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