With stagnant or decreasing reimbursement and expenses continuing to rise, practices are looking for ways to improve their bottom line. In addition, more and more patients have higher deductibles and cost sharing responsibility for their outpatient therapy services. For patients to pay their financial responsibility to the therapy practice or organization, they are using their credit cards to do so. For the therapy practice or organization, this further reduces their income since they will incur up to a 3% fee for each transaction by their credit card processing company. This leads to an important question. Can the therapy practice or

With the start of each new year, the question of can I collect the deductible and/or coinsurance from a Medicare beneficiary at the time of service or must I submit the claim to my Medicare Administrative Contractor first and wait for the explanation of benefits (EOB) to see what the financial responsibility is to the Medicare beneficiary? Well, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) does answer this question. In CMS Publication