Physical Therapy Coding Considerations

Physical therapy billing and coding is the second most important facet of any physical therapy practice (after the patients themselves). There are many things you must consider prior to the purchase of the proper physical therapy coding software for your business. While there are huge servers available for you to store your information on in conjunction with numerous other physical therapists, you may want to invest in a stand alone system that would keep your information safe and concealed due to the HIPAA regulations that mandate patient privacy.

In the United States, national standards have been established to protect patient confidentiality. The safety and security of electronic health records is the responsibility of every physical therapist, and this is where the choice of the physical therapy coding program becomes an important decision.

A good software system should not be very expensive. If the software provider is worth the money they will offer a discount for multiple users to be entered into the system for physical therapy coding. The pricing over all will be affected by the number of patients that are being billed using the physical therapy coding program.

In these kinds of systems there is a division between provider and user. A provider according to most system definition is someone who is licensed as a health professional. This professional is not the referring physician. This professional is listed on the 1500 form (in Box 24-J). Provider could also refer to a professional that provides health services that a particular physical therapist might want to keep tabs on. This will help them keep things in order for accounting functions. As per the HIPAA law, a user is simply anyone who has access to patient information. Each user must have their own login that is unique as they access the system.

To break this down further, a single physical therapist might be entered into their particular physical therapy billing coding software account three times. One time would be as a personal tax-ID, another might be as a corporate tax-ID and a third for a Group which he is billed under as a separate entity. If this physical therapist then has four employees that also use the software the total number of users would rise to seven.

Trusted software providers will most likely be able to let you in on who else is using the software before you buy it just so you can find out the ease of use and the comprehension of the services themselves. A system you can trust will offer you simple to use software and an affordable price, but almost more important than this is to have the right kind of helpful software support to keep users happy and buying updates for their software.

Cost is always an issue when concerning physical therapy coding software. Stand alone systems will save you money in many different ways against electronic medical record services. Effective stand alone physical therapy coding software will save you on the purchase cost as well as the the lower costs of updates annually. With stand alone physical therapy billing coding software you will have shorter reimbursement cycles. This means you will have faster payments since the electronic billing will be done automatically and properly the first time since all of the physical therapy coding is done by computer.

All in all, it seems that a stand alone physical therapy billing coding software provider might be a better choice for a start up practice.