Medical billing is a multi-million dollar industry in America today. The exact process a bill goes through varies widely depending on various factors, such as the type of insurance a patient has and the type of service rendered by a provider.
The process begins after a patient has a doctor visit, which could include actual treatment for injuries or other medical conditions. Sometimes the visit may simply be a diagnosis of a condition leading to a prescription given by a doctor. After the visit has concluded, a doctor will give details of the visit to a medical specialist of some sort. This specialist will fill out a billing record with more technical information regarding the visit, such as codes representing different diagnoses. The medical billing services are recorded & is then sent to the insurance company, or sometimes to an intermediate firm that will process the record beforehand. Either way, the billing record will get processed and analyzed to make a determination on which charges the insurance company pays for. The insurance coverage of a patient may not actually cover all the costs of the services the provider has included in a billing record.