Did you know that there are various approved medical aid scheme rates depending on the medical aid scheme of your patients? This can be used as a benchmark in determining at which pricing point to cost your services for medical aid patients and can also give you an indication of the going rate for services for cash patients.
Benefits of Being Contracted into Medical Aid as a Healthcare Practitioner in Private Practice
There are numerous benefits to being contracted in with various medical aid schemes, especially in the current economic climate where your patients and potential patients may need therapy but cannot afford these services out of their own funds.
Patients who do have medical aid tend to first seek out therapists that are contracted to their medical aid, to avoid having to pay large sums of money upfront and then struggling to claim it back on their own as they are not adequately informed or prefer not going through the hassle of trying to figure out the process on their own.
Prescribed Minimum Benefits and Extended Benefits for Medical Aid Claims
Another benefit for the patients is that some conditions may even be covered as part of the prescribed minimum benefits (PMB’s) of the medical aid, which would then assist in not delving too deep into the savings portion of their medical funds.
What many practitioners and patients do not realise, is that even when these PMB’s are depleted, a request can be sent to the medical aid to evaluate and possibly extend these benefits on a case-by-case basis. These extended benefits can make a tremendous impact on the quality of prolonged treatment and the patient experience, especially when they do not have the funds to continue with therapy out of their own accord.
Where Can You Find the Current Medical Aid Rates?
The medical aid tariffs can be requested from the medical schemes individually, on the assumption that you have an active BHF practice number and that the rates pertain to your area of expertise. Even though these rates normally only change once a year, it can still be quite a large administrative task to obtain these rates from the more than 80 different schemes, which service more than 8.87 million individuals across the country.
Reasons You Would Consider Using a Billing Service Company like KITRIN?
As a company specialising in provision of medical billing software and managed medical and allied health practice management services, we pride ourselves on taking this hassle away from the practitioner, by ensuring that we continuously stay abreast of any changes in the industry and also ensure that we have these medical aid approved rates pre-programmed for easy use on our software.
Since we believe in the value-add this information can add to practitioners, we are also willing to provide the rates to any practitioner that might need it in their own practice and who needs to benchmark their pricing against industry-wide approved rates.
Should you wish to find out more about our value-added service offering or just want to check and request a copy of the rates applicable to your specific industry, you are more than welcome to contact us via our website www.kitrin.com or send an email to [email protected].