The patient signatures are very important to the billing side of things. Then receiving facility should only be signing if the patient is unable to sign, and they should be putting something more specific in there than "patient condition." Examples of something they should be putting is confusion, poss fractured arm, unconscious, demntia.....reasons that make the patient unable to sign. Along with the receiving facility signature are you or the crew also signing off on that as well? Because if you are not, you should be. If no signature is obtained from the patient or the receiving facility, then the billing company is not able to bill that claim to the insurance compnay until a signature is obtained. So the billing compnay should be sending out a signature form to the patient to sign, waiting for the patient to return it, before that claim is even billable. This process does delay the payment on the run, and we also all know how patient's like to respond to anything the receive in the mail LOL!!
If you have not received the insurance infomation after a 911 call, it creates additional work for the billing office, but sometimes it just can't be avoided. The hospital sheet is extremely helpful, but not if it's blank. And every billing department has differnt process but I can tell you how our office handles those kind sof things. When we received a run with no insurance information on it, the first thing we do is check to see if they have Medicaid, we can check eligibility electronically, and/or if the patient is of Medicare age we will check that as well. If there is no insurance found we will contact the hospital that patient was transported to or from & get the information that they have on file. If there is no luck there a special form is sent to the patient letting them know that we have no insurance listed for them & that they need to return it so we can get their insurance billed. lf we do not hear from that patient, we will then call them.
