Month: October 2017

Medicare pays dietitians 85% of what they would pay a physician offering the same service.  Here’s where you can look up what they pay in your state.

Physician Fee Schedule Look-Up Tool – Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services

Like much of Medicare’s Online information, it can be overwhelming. The Academy has narrowed it down to the few codes we use listed by state. If you are a member, 2017’s fee schedule was available here.

Many private practice dietitians find insurance billing to be an absolutely necessary evil if they are going to make a private practice viable.  The issue is that many or most clients  simply will not lay out cash and take on the paperwork themselves to get reimbursed by the insurance company.  The bottom line is that insurance companies will pay much more and the dietitian will have fewer barriers to meeting with the patient if insurance billing is offered.

The core of the billing process is making sure that each and every required line from the insurance billing form (CMS 1500) can be filled out correctly on each client. Here are some resources that can help.

CMS 1500 Instruction Manual from the NUCC (National Uniform Claim Committee) who publish the claim form used in all our insurance billing.

This instruction set is specific to filling out the CMS 1500 for Medicare Billing.