Your practice is likely aware of the most common billing errors that cost you money. These may include submitting the wrong claim form, undercoding your services and misusing modifiers. But your practice shouldn’t focus only on the most common billing issues when evaluating how you can bring in more cash.

Check out five little-known billing errors that could cause your practice to lose money.

1. Simple Typos

Transposing just two characters in a patient’s policy number or spelling a patient’s name wrong could be enough to cause a claim denial. Make sure you triple check all details on your claims, including policy numbers, dates of service, birthdates, and patient names.

If you submit these incorrectly and get a denial, you can appeal with the correct information, but your best bet is to ensure you don’t have these problems up front.

2. Missing the Filing Deadline

Missing your payer’s filing date by just one day is enough to cause claim denials. Although you likely submit most of your claims within a week or so of the date of service, it’s possible that some may fall through the cracks.

For Medicare, you typically must submit your claims within 12 months after the date of service. Other payers may have different deadlines, so check with your insurers and be sure not to miss the limit.

3. Billing the Wrong Insurer

Some patients have more than one insurance plan, and others change insurance from time to time. In either of these cases, it’s easy to bill the wrong payer for a patient’s services. That’s why it’s essential to collect all insurance cards when the patient presents to your practice.

If the patient has more than one insurance plan, determine which insurer should be considered the primary payer and submit that claim first. Otherwise, you’re likely to face denials.

4. Billing Add-on Codes as Primary

When CPT lists a code with a “+” symbol in front of it, that means the service is an add-on code, and these must be reported along with primary codes. For instance, +G2211 must be billed with certain services, such as E/M codes, or it’s not payable. If you report an add-on code without its accompanying primary service, your claim will be denied.

5. Using the Wrong NPI

If you submit an incorrect or invalid NPI for the provider, your claim won’t be paid. The NPI must be in the payer’s system and shouldn’t be truncated. All NPIs will be 10 digits long, and any that are shorter or longer should be double checked because they’ll likely be denied.