Lactation Consultant Billing is a company of medical coding experts seeking business solutions for lactation consultants. Working in the industry since 2012 when the Affordable Care Act granted lactation coverage for U.S. women, LCB has been dedicated to finding the best ways to get IBCLCs, CLCs and other lactation specialists paid for their work as part of the mother/baby healthcare team.
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Today, lactation consultants who participate in lactation insurance billing see their patients multiple times – often once prenatally, once right after birth in the hospital, home or birth center, and once or more at home or in office postpartum. Prior to the Affordable Care Act mandating breastfeeding support, consultants typically saw patients an average of only one time. Patients cited cost as the main prohibitive factor in returning to their lactation consultant for follow up services.
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Most of the consultants we work for regularly see patients for additional consults after the immediate postpartum period such as when mothers prepare to go back to work or when they have questions about how to add complementary foods to their babies’ diets while maintaining a strong breastfeeding relationship. Patients are much more apt to book additional appointments to support them throughout the first year or more postpartum and much more apt to continue breastfeeding through a crisis, such as mastitis or a drop in supply after returning to their office, if they already have established a relationship with a lactation consultant and the service is free. Further, babies who need repeated support for a challenge such as tongue tie can now have a consultant sit with them through what can turn into many hours of postpartum suck retraining care and even attend a frenotomy with the family which leads to the best possible outcome for those babies.
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At LCB, we have been on the cutting edge of moving lactation consultants into the vocation that they desired when they got into this work – to help mothers and babies breastfeed. Most healthcare workers don’t join the medical field to be doing endless hours of administrative work. Insurance billing can be tedious and frustrating. Many new consultants don’t have a busy enough office to hire staff to handle billing for them; when there is a baby boom, they can be very busy, and then they may have a lull in activity for a couple of weeks. Those whose practices have grown to bustling neighborhood centers also want to keep their pulse on the mother, not be spending all their time in the office while their staff is with breastfeeding families. Our company only works for you when you need us, however you need us. Our compensation is based on a percentage collected, not on an hourly rate or monthly fee, so you will always come out ahead and be profitable.
Our approach is threefold:
1 We assist our lactation consultants in getting network status with insurance companies, which puts the consultant on the insurance companies’ directories and helps increase patients’ ability to find a lactation consultant. This grants more access to breastfeeding support for mothers and increases volume in the lactation consultant’s practice. Currently, Aetna, United and some Blue Shield companies allow lactation consultants to be in network. License lactation consultants and consultants who hold additional licenses or credentials have additional contracting options. To find out more about credentialing, click here.
2 We provide fast and efficient communication between the lactation consultant and our coders to submit claims electronically and seamlessly. Our goal is to provide you with a transparent system where you can track your claims’ progress in real time, not just in a monthly statement. Our reps are available by email, text or phone from 10:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. EST to answer your inquiries or assist you. Our basic fees include reworking claims and appealing denialed (unpaid) claims when the claim is legitimately payable under the insurance company’s payor guidelines. Find out more about our easy claims processing by clicking here.
3 We strategize with you about ways to increase your revenue. Our greatest pleasure is when we can offer tips that help the consult’s business boom so that we get a call saying that they need to hire staff to help support the amount of moms calling for appointments. Growing your home-based business, opening your first office, adding office locations, collaborating with pediatricians, OBs, midwives and nurse-practitioners, winning hospital contracts…these are all possible with the right back office support. LCB is an extension of your visionary back office support, guiding you or your team to success and profitability. To find out more about business mentoring, click here.
We love participating in your success! Our primary hope is that we can ease the burden of insurance billing so that lactation consultants can focus on what they do best – assisting the mother/baby dyad.