Question
Can an audiologist with an Au.D. bill differently than a non-Au.D. audiologist, to improve or increase reimbursement?
Answer
You can bill whatever you want. What you get paid is a different story. Now, having said that, for both Au.D. and non-Au.D. audiologists, what you need to do is to be able to justify whatever you bill based upon your cost of service delivery. And you've got to calculate this on a per-hour or a per-procedure or a per-patient basis, to know several things.
Let me digress. The elements that you need to include would be the annualized wages for any support staff, your utilities, your rent or mortgage, your insurances, your licenses, the equipment depreciation, office supplies, etcetera, etcetera. Your salary, by the way, is an important part of that. And include benefits, if you provide health insurance and other benefits for yourself and for your staff.
You also have to have an increment in there called profit, to know how much profit you want to try to make for the practice, and also cash reserve, because you do need to have a cash reserve for your practice. Cash reserve serves a number of purposes for bad debt, for equipment replacement, and for a number of different things.
And you've got to know how much this is going to be, in order to know how to set your billing rate. That will vary from one part of the country to another. It'll vary based upon if you are inner city versus suburb. It'll vary based upon if you're city versus rural. But you've got to justify what you want to charge based upon how much does it cost you to provide the service, how much markup do you want to include in it all, for profit, and also for equipment replacement and planning ahead.
Robert Fifer, Ph.D., is the Director of Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology for the Mailman Center for Child Development at the University of Miami School of Medicine. He is also an Audiology Online Contributing Editor in the area of Coding and Billing. He is the ASHA representative to the American Medical Association's Health Care Professions Advisory Committee for the Relative Value Utilization Committee in addition to being ASHA's representative to the AMA's Practice Expense Advisory Committee.
Editor's Note - The above is a partial transcript from the Coding and Billing QNA Live e-Seminar that was conducted on Audiology Online on June 27, 2007. (The recorded version is available here - Also the complete edited transcript is available here. The format of the session was different from most traditional presentations as we solicited questions ahead of time and also solicited questions during the event and had Dr. Fifer focus on answering those questions during the live session. We have published the transcript from the seminar in a semi-rough format to preserve the live feel from the session and to accelerate the publication timeline of this information to the Audiology Online readers. Submitted questions are bolded, followed by Dr. Fifer's response. Dr. Fifer is a frequent Contributing Editor for Audiology Online in this area, look for additional Coding and Billing QNA sessions on our home page in the near future. - Paul Dybala, Ph.D. - Editor
