Duplicate Claims in Medical Billing | Duplicate Service (2024)

  • Parul Garg

A duplicate claim in medical billing is one of the most common billing errors. It can cause several issues for your medical practice, even resulting in disciplinary action by a Medicare administrative contractor. However, once you understand how to avoid duplicate claims, you can prevent denials in medical billing and improve your clinic’s efficiency.

Below, the PracticeForces experts share a brief guide on how duplicate claims happen in medical billing and how to avoid them.

What are Duplicate Medical Billing Claims?

Duplicate claims occur when a medical practice submits multiple claims for the same healthcare service they provide to a patient on a specific date of service. More than one identical medical claim diminishes your clinic’s administrative efficiency, wasting time and sucking up valuable resources. It also leads to denied claims, which incurs disciplinary actions and makes an establishment look far less professional.

So, understanding how to avoid duplicate claims when it comes to medical billing is essential to ensure your practice runs smoothly and efficiently.

What Causes Duplicate Claims and Claim Denials?

Duplicate and denied claims occur for various reasons, including human error and separate medical practices that conduct repeat procedures. If you want to avoid duplicating claims and the denials that are sure to follow, consider these common causes:

  • The practice submits a revised claim that does not contain the correct information.
  • The clinic bills a patient more than once for a single service.
  • The clinic performs the same service multiple times in one day.
  • Another medical practice gives a patient the same service as your clinic on the same day and then submits an identical CPT code.

Whatever the reason, your clinic will need to resolve these issues quickly. As soon as you notice a duplicate claim, you should notify the patient’s insurance company to avoid professional and legal repercussions. For example, if a clinic double bills a patient and doesn’t reverse the charges quickly enough, it could be subject to an FBI investigation for health care fraud.

Although duplicate claims and denials are relatively common in the medical field, they can cause significant problems that jeopardize your practice and earning potential. Thankfully, a professional medical billing and coding company like PracticeForces can dramatically reduce these issues and diminish your clinic’s workload.

Contact PracticeForces for Exceptional Medical Billing and Coding Services in Florida

PracticeForces is one of Florida’s most trusted professional medical billing and coding services. We help medical practices enhance their coding and billing procedures for a smoother operation. We can also help you learn more about how to handle claim denials professionally so that your clinic can minimize the impact.

We’ve helped hundreds of medical practices improve their coding and billing procedures. We can do the same for you!

Do you want to avoid having to handle a duplicate claim in medical billing while improving your clinic’s functionality? Call PracticeForces at (727) 499-0351 today to see how we can help your clinic streamline its billing and coding!

Duplicate Claims in Medical Billing | Duplicate Service (2)

Parul Garg

Parul Garg, CEO and co-founder of PracticeForces, has significantly contributed to the growth of over 1,000 U.S. medical practices through her expertise in medical billing and coding since the company’s inception in 2003. With a background in Computer Science and an MBA in Human Resources, her leadership and AAPC-certified coding skills have been pivotal in managing the company’s operations effectively.

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Duplicate Claims in Medical Billing | Duplicate Service (2024)

FAQs

How to handle duplicate claims? ›

As soon as you notice a duplicate claim, you should notify the patient's insurance company to avoid professional and legal repercussions. For example, if a clinic double bills a patient and doesn't reverse the charges quickly enough, it could be subject to an FBI investigation for health care fraud.

What does exact duplicate claim service mean? ›

Submitting an exact duplicate claim or service: This occurs when a healthcare provider accidentally submits the same claim or service multiple times. It can happen due to human error or system glitches.

How to avoid duplicate claim denials for repeat procedures? ›

If separate claims are submitted for the same beneficiary on the same day with the same ZIP code, and you bill them on separate claims, the second claim could deny as an exact duplicate. Bill both transports together on the same claim to avoid this duplicate denial from occurring.

What are the three most common mistakes on a claim that will cause denials? ›

Here, we discuss the first five most common medical coding and billing mistakes that cause claim denials so you can avoid them in your business:
  • Claim is not specific enough. ...
  • Claim is missing information. ...
  • Claim not filed on time (aka: Timely Filing)

How do you handle duplicate records? ›

  1. 1 Identify duplicates. The first step is to identify which records in your data are duplicates. ...
  2. 2 Analyze duplicates. The next step is to analyze why and how duplicates occur in your data. ...
  3. 3 Remove duplicates. ...
  4. 4 Merge duplicates. ...
  5. 5 Flag duplicates. ...
  6. 6 Choose duplicates. ...
  7. 7 Here's what else to consider.
Sep 18, 2023

What is the denial code for duplicate claims? ›

What is denial code CO 18? Before trying to overturn any type of denial, you need to understand what it is. Denial code CO 18 means, “exact duplicate claims or services.”

What is a duplicate claim in CMS? ›

Duplicate claims are any claims paid across more than one claim number for the same beneficiary, CPT/HCPCS code and service state by the same provider. Affected Code(s) All CPT, HCPCS codes.

What is the duplicate modifier in medical billing? ›

CPT Modifier 76: 'Repeat procedure by same physician: The physician may need to indicate that a service was repeated the same day subsequent to the original service. This modifier indicates the difference between duplicate services and repeated services.

What is a duplicate service? ›

Duplicate Service means a Service operated by a Bus Operator that runs an identical route to another Service of the same Operator concurrently to help reduce delays on that route.

How do you validate duplicate records? ›

Using the GROUP BY clause to group all rows by the target column(s) – i.e. the column(s) you want to check for duplicate values on. Use the COUNT function in the HAVING clause to check if any of the groups have more than 1 entry; those would be the duplicate values.

What modifier is used for repeat procedure? ›

Modifier -76: Used to indicate that a procedure or service was repeated subsequent to the original procedure or service by the same provider ID on for the same member on the same date of service or within the post-operative period.

Why is it critical to reduce or eliminate duplicate records? ›

If duplicate records are not removed, then data processing will fail. The purpose of this control is to remove multiple instances of records in order to prepare the dataset for additional processing.

How to reduce denials in medical billing? ›

How to Help Prevent Medical Billing Claim Denials
  1. Quantify and categorize denials. ...
  2. Create a task force. ...
  3. Improve patient data quality. ...
  4. Avoid incorrect assumptions and determine the true reasons for denials. ...
  5. Develop a denials prevention mindset in all parts of the revenue cycle, ...
  6. Optimize claims management software.

Can you bill a patient for a denied claim? ›

In some cases where a claim is denied because the clinic or hospital sent it to the insurer too late, the clinic or hospital may turn to the patient for payment.

When to use modifier 25 and 59? ›

Only if no more descriptive modifier is available, and the use of modifier 59 best explains the circ*mstances, should modifier 59 be used. Note: Modifier 59 should not be appended to an E/M service. To report a separate and distinct E/M service with a non-E/M service performed on the same date, see modifier 25.”

Can you claim something twice? ›

Same Loss Cannot Be Claimed Twice Over.

Can you file two claims at the same time? ›

While you cannot file multiple claims against the same party or provider, you can file multiple suits after an auto accident if multiple parties were at fault or if multiple insurance companies maintain coverage or may be responsible, and you suffered injuries or damages as a result.

Can you make a claim twice? ›

As a starting principle, an insured cannot profit from their loss or make a claim twice. However, where a policyholder is insured by multiple policies, they can choose which policy they wish to claim under.

What can happen if you make a false claim? ›

False Claims Act [31 U.S.C.

Filing false claims may result in fines of up to three times the programs' loss plus $11,000 per claim filed.

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