General Surgery Coding Alert

The following supplement to General Surgery Coding Alert is the transcript of a teleconference presented by The Coding Institute. To obtain the slides for the conference, please log on to our Online Subscription System at http://codinginstitute.com/login and download the current issue, and the slides will be contained therein. If you're not sure how to use the Online Subscription System or need help downloading the issue, please contact our customer service department at 1-800-508-2582 or service@medville.com, and one of our representatives will be able to assist you.

The speaker for the teleconference, Laureen Jandroep, OTR, CPC, CCS-P, CPC-H, CCS is a leading national authority on medical coding and reimbursement. Ms. Jandroep ran a successful practice, which billed over $1.6 million per year with less than .06% rejection rate. She currently owns A+ Medical Management & Education, a prestigious national provider of coding and reimbursement training, research and consulting. Ms. Jandroep founded the South Jersey Chapter of the American Academy of Professional Coders and is an active supporter of this and other chapters. She also formed the Coding and Reimbursement Network, a national online community of medical coders, billers and office managers that delivers education via computers and telephones. Welcome everyone.  My name is Laureen Jandroep and basically I thought I was going to be an occupational therapist when I grow up.  That is why I went to school for and I ran a therapy practice for about ten years where I kind of got very involved in the clinical world and the management aspect of healthcare.  When prospective payment came to the arena, pretty much my rehab business was over because nursing homes, which were my prime clients, no longer wanted to outsource the therapy services. So I got into billing because we were doing 1.6 million in billing a year on our own and we really were doing well - we had less than a 0.06% rejection rate so we thought wow, we are really good at billing so let us do that.  And I did that for a little bit, found out really quick that to be a good biller, you really needed to know coding, and I took a course and became a certified coder and in the process was teaching on the side and fell in love with teaching.  I absolutely love it, much better than the other career path I was in.  So this is what I do now full time.  I teach people how to become certified coders and do teleconferences like this, talk at local chapter meetings and things like that so I hope you will enjoy today's presentation on modifiers.  It is one that I cut my teeth on many years ago, [...]