Adding Ancillaries

Question: I would like to bring some new services to my practice, but I do not know how to do it. For example, if I add a provider does she bill patients on her own or is it under my provider ID?

Answer: As you consider adding ancillary services, they should, obviously, be something your existing patients actually need on a regular basis. From there it is just a matter of placing some phone calls and doing some math.

For X-rays, for example, you’d certainly want to call your major payers and see if they would reimburse or not. You’d also want to study how many patients you send out for X-rays monthly, what you could get paid for those services, than see if the revenue would offset the cost of the machine, staffing for it, and the lost opportunity cost of giving space to the machine in your practice.

You can also look into ancillary services that patients pay out of pocket for.

If you add another physician, they generally bill under their own provider number, but they can obviously be an employee.

It is possible to add non-physician providers - NPs, PAs - and bill incident-to. In short, they follow up on a course of treatment for existing patients that you already have set, and they bill as you.

For more information, type “incident-to” in the Search box on the left side of the page.