No show fees a no-no in KY
We have had tons of problems with Medicaid patients being no shows for both consultations and surgeries so we have asked these specific questions of our Medicaid carriers. In KY, you cannot bill no show fees to Medicaid recipients. We also cannot request surgery deposits or medical record fees. In our system, we have an internal posting code that indicates a person has been a no show for an appointment and automatically adds our charge for this. We, of course, make this a $0 amount for Medicaid patients but we are human and do occasionally forget to remove it (we usually correct that at a later date when it happens). In one case, a Medicaid recipient received a bill with this charge on it before we could fix it and turned it over to her caseworker who then reported it to the state. A state representative made a trip to our office specifically to reiterate to us that we cannot charge Medicaid recipients for no shows. Our policy is similar to the previous post: 3 no shows and patient will have to go elsewhere. Also,when a Medicaid patient schedules for a surgery, we tell them they must confirm the appointment with an actual person in our office 24 hours before the surgery or it will be cancelled. We still get our fair share of no shows on consultations but this has really helped on our surgeries.
Hope this helps!
Jennifer, CPC