Medical billing audit services

Find the revenue your claims are leaving behind

Our certified auditors test coding, documentation and payment against payer rules, then show you exactly where collections leak and what it takes to stop it.

Prospective auditPre-bill review. Claims are corrected before submission, so errors never reach the payer or create overpayment liability.
Retrospective auditPost-payment review of paid and denied claims to quantify exposure, recover underpayments and document refunds owed.
Modifier -25 / -59 E/M distribution LCD / NCD alignment NCCI edits
Audit risk & recovery calculatorLive estimate
Estimated annual uncollected revenue$195K
Recoverable through audit$98K Remaining write-off risk$98K Reworked, paid late$105K

Assumes 65% of denied claims are never resubmitted and a post-audit denial rate of 5%. Your audit replaces these assumptions with your own claim data.

02 · Coding & compliance audit

Every code tested against the note and the payer rule

We pull a statistically valid sample of claims and review each line against the source documentation, the CPT and HCPCS code set, and the payer's edits. Findings are scored by dollar impact and compliance risk.

CPT/HCPCS unbundling

Component codes billed separately when a comprehensive code applies, checked against NCCI procedure-to-procedure pairs and MUE limits.

Upcoding and undercoding

Levels that the documented MDM or time does not support create refund liability. Levels below what was documented leave earned revenue unbilled.

ICD-10-CM specificity

Laterality, episode-of-care 7th characters and combination codes. Unspecified diagnoses are a leading trigger for medical-necessity denials.

Medical necessity matching

Diagnosis-to-procedure pairing verified against the applicable LCD or NCD covered-code list and frequency limits.

Claim path
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Charge capture Charges entered from paper superbills days later; missed ancillary services.
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Coding E/M levels chosen by habit; -25 and -59 appended without supporting documentation.
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Claim scrub Generic clearinghouse edits only. NCCI pairs, MUEs and LCD diagnosis lists not checked.
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Submission Eligibility and prior authorization not re-verified before the claim leaves.
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Adjudication Denials pile up in the work queue with no root-cause tracking.
18% Of claims denied on first submission, each one needing rework, appeal or write-off.
03 · Revenue leakage & underpayment analysis

From gross charges to cash, with every loss accounted for

Contractual adjustments are expected. Adjustments that exceed your contract are not. We reprice paid claims against your loaded fee schedules to separate the two.

Revenue waterfallIllustrative practice, $1M gross charges
Gross chargesContractual adjustmentsCoding errorsTimely filingNet collections
Coding errors−$42K Denied or down-coded lines from unbundling, modifier misuse and unspecified diagnoses. Largely preventable with pre-bill review.

Contractual allowance auditing

Each allowed amount compared line by line to the contracted rate for that CPT, modifier and place of service.

Fee schedule variance

Payers that have not loaded annual escalators or are still paying an expired schedule.

Silent PPO discounts

Rented-network discounts applied without a direct agreement, identified through remittance network codes.

CCI edits and ABN compliance

Denials from avoidable CCI conflicts, and non-covered services billed without a valid ABN and GA modifier, which cannot be billed to the patient.

04 · A/R aging & denial root cause

Old A/R is a symptom. We trace it to the workflow that caused it

Open balances are classified by age and payer, then every denial is mapped to the stage where it originated. Fixing the source is what keeps the same CARC codes from returning next month.

BucketAudit treatment
> 60 daysStatus check and correction queue; most are still fully collectible.
> 90 daysAppeal or reconsideration, prioritized by balance and filing deadline.
> 120 daysTimely-filing proof, escalation, or documented write-off decision.
Denial breakdown by stage
Coding and charge-capture errors that surface as medical-necessity and bundling denials.
Medical necessity (LCD/NCD)34% Diagnosis-to-CPT validation against covered code lists pre-bill.
Modifier misuse (-25, -59, X{EPSU})26% Modifier rules engine plus documentation spot checks.
NCCI bundling conflicts22% PTP edit scrub with column 1/column 2 logic.
ICD-10-CM specificity18% Provider education on laterality and 7th characters.
E/M bell curve
ProviderSpecialty benchmark
9921199212992139921499215
99215 · Level 5Provider 20% · Benchmark 7% Risk: Level 5 billed 13 points above benchmark. This over-utilization pattern is a common trigger for payer prepayment review and RAC audits. Documentation must support the MDM or total time.
Illustrative distribution. Your audit uses current CMS utilization data for your specialty.
05 · Documentation & E/M benchmarking

See where each provider sits on the curve before a payer does

We chart every provider's distribution across 99202–99205 and 99211–99215 against CMS specialty utilization. Outliers at Level 4 and 5 are the pattern payer analytics and RAC contractors look for first.

MDM complexity review

Problems addressed, data reviewed and risk of management scored against the AMA MDM table for each sampled visit.

Time-based coding

Total time on the date of service documented and attributable, including prolonged service add-on eligibility.

Provider scorecards

Accuracy rate, dollar variance and specific documentation gaps, delivered per provider for focused education.

06 · Audit methodology & remediation

A defensible method, and a plan that changes the outcome

Sampling follows OIG-recognized RAT-STATS methodology, so findings can be extrapolated and hold up if an external review follows.

Phase 1 · Week 1

Data ingestion & scoping

We connect to your PM system, clearinghouse and ERA files under a BAA, then define the audit universe by provider, payer, CPT family and date range.

Deliverable: Audit scope and data inventory
Pull 12 months of claims, remits and denial codes Load payer fee schedules and contract terms Identify high-risk code families and outlier providers Agree scope, sample size and reporting format
Customized reporting services · 07

An executive RCM dashboard built on five numbers that matter

Every client report opens with the same KPI suite, measured the same way each month, with targets set against MGMA and HFMA benchmark ranges. Select a metric to see its trend.

First-pass resolution, last 12 monthsIllustrative client trend
> 95%
OctNovDecJanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSep

Share of claims paid in full on the first submission, without rework, appeal or resubmission. The clearest single measure of front- and mid-end quality.

08 · Specialty-specific insights

Reports that speak your specialty's billing rules

Generic reports miss the rules that drive specialty revenue: global surgical periods, component billing, therapy thresholds, frequency limits. We build them in.

612wRVUs per provider per month
100%Global-period visits tracked with 99024
97%Implant invoice cost recovery
MetricWhat we trackCurrent
Global surgical period 90-day post-op visits flagged so they are not billed separately or denied as bundled. 0 billed in error
Modifier -24 / -57 / -79 Unrelated E/M and decision-for-surgery visits inside the global window. 99.1% supported
Implant and DME carve-outs Invoice-matched implant billing where the contract allows separate payment. $18.4K / month
wRVU productivity Provider wRVUs against MGMA percentile for compensation planning. 68th percentile
09 · Payer performance & contract profitability

Know which contracts pay, and which ones only look like they do

Payment speed, denial frequency, appeal yield and effective yield per RVU, reported by payer so renegotiation starts from evidence.

Days to pay vs. denial rateIllustrative payer mix
Denial rate →
Slow & high denial Fast & clean
Days to pay →
UnitedHealthcare: contract summary
Appeal yield47% Yield per wRVU$41.30
Elevated contract risk Slowest commercial payer with rising prior-auth denials. Strong candidate for contract renegotiation with performance terms.
10 · Predictive analytics & forecasting

Plan next year's cash flow from this year's claim data

Forecasts model seasonal volume, deductible resets, patient out-of-pocket bad debt and scheduled fee schedule changes, then run three scenarios so budgets have a range, not a guess.

Monthly net collections forecast
$520K $300K
OctNovDecJanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSep
12-month projected net collections$5.01M
Patient volumeFlat Patient bad debt3.4% of pt. resp. Fee schedule change+1.0% Denial rate6% Illustrative model. Client forecasts are built from 24 months of your remittance data.

Start with a free billing audit

Send a recent A/R aging report and 90 days of remittance data. We will return a findings summary with dollar impact, top denial root causes and a sample of the reporting you would receive monthly.

Call +1 (512) 537-3595 info@claimstonebilling.com Monday to Friday, 8 AM – 6 PM EST