Medical Billing Software Troubleshooting Overview

As much as billers don't want to think about it, software for medical billing is not perfect. There are going to be problems, sometimes lots of them. In the next series of articles, which will cover a number of critical areas of the DME software system, we will go over the most common problems that you will run into when operating your DME medical billing system. In this particular installment, we're going to just give a brief overview of the areas that will be covered in more detail.

The first part of the system where you are going to run into problems is the actual installation and running of the software itself. Even though manufacturers try to make software that will work on any operating system and network, this isn't always the case. Sometimes just installing the software itself can be a problem.

The second part of the system where you are going to run into problems is the entering of data, which is where you store your doctor files, patient files, inventory files and so on. These data entry problems can range from something as simple as a piece of data not saving correctly to losing whole chunks of information or even a whole database.

The third part of the system where you are going to run into problems is the actual billing of claims. This is where you run into the largest variety of problems because billing itself covers such a wide area. This installment will probably be further broken up into smaller installments in order to cover everything and not give you information overload.

The fourth part of the system where you are going to run into problems is with the printing of forms. This is another part of the medical billing system that is so complex because of the large number of forms that sometimes trying to determine the cause of the problem can be extremely difficult at best. These problems range from something simple like a form not lining up to fields not printing at all.

The fifth part of the system where you are going to run into problems is with your add ons. Because there are so many different add ons for medical billing packages, there is no one troubleshooting method that works for all of them, especially when you're dealing with something as complex as barcoding or retail sales equipment.

The sixth part of the system where you are going to run into problems is with security and administration. This is probably the last place you want to have a problem because security is so critical. These problems can run from something as simple as a person who is supposed to have access to a module not having that access to somebody literally breaking into the system.

The final part of the system where you are going to run into problems is with the communications system. This comes into play when you're doing things like electronically billing or running an online update for the system itself.

We'll be covering all of these topics in more detail in our future medical billing installments for troubleshooting your software.

Michael Russell Your Independent guide to Medical Billing