What are the key differences between physician billing and patient billing?

My area of expertise is in web technology. However, I do occasionally get IT search assignments in the health information management. Currently, I have a requirement for strong physician billing experience. I realize that’s different than patient billing. But from an IT “skill set” standpoint, what are the key differences that I should be aware of? Furthermore, are there any other acronyms or industry terms for "physician specific” billing that I should watch for (e.g., vendors, packages, technologies, etc).?

Thanks for the great answers so far. I have gained a solid understanding of the differences from a process standpoint. My client will only consider physician billing "systems" experience specifically. Yet, from your answers I understand that there is not much difference between the two - at least from a process perspective. I would like to see some answers with a more "technical" slant ... many thanks to all!

Answer

In lay mans terms Hospitals work like a business center, here the various departments do their services and issue bills, for eg. pharmacy, radiology,MRI etc.The Physician also does his job and issues a bill this is the Physician billing.

The hospital in tun consolidates all these department bills and issues one bill
called the Patient billing.

My understanding is physician billing (billing a physician's charges to insurance companies) you must be extremely familiar with the diagnosis codes and how to code properly. That is the same whether billing for physician or hospital or surgery center, etc.

Patient information would be the patient billing the insurance company directly for the physician/hospital charges - no one generally does this type of billing except as an individual on their behalf. And they don't need to know the diagnosis codes since those are supplied by the physician/hospital.

I'd say if you know how to do "medical billing" you'd be set in any provider environment.

Integration of Medical Billing module in EMR

I was trying to find out if there are any company providing Medical billing component which can be used as a plug-in component in EMR SYSTEM.

I know one company which provides similar service but the issue is that the data resides in there database.

Answers

In the U.S.A. almost all medical providers had billing software ("Practice Management System" prior to EMR.

So, all EMR programs either accept an interface to the billing system and/or have a billing module.

The system that all health care managers want is a system that does have one single unifed database structure - not a different one.

An approach to implementing EMR is then to implement it in modules: scheduling, billing, then clinical records.