Standards

Resources: Funding, Fees and Billing

Create a Process for Reviewing Your Billing

All physiotherapists must routinely review billing and invoices that use their name and registration number, even when invoices are prepared by administrative staff.  

According to the Funding, Fees and Billing Standard, physiotherapists must: 

  • Routinely review their fees, billings, or accounts to ensure that:  
    • Any fees charged are accurate and reasonable, and  
    • Billings or accounts are accurate.  

Physiotherapists must be able to show that they did the review.  

Billing Review – What Physiotherapists Should Know 

As a physiotherapist, you need to use your professional judgment to decide the best way to review your billing and invoicing practices. This decision could be based on how many patients you see, if you have identified risks related to your billing, if you don’t work at the practice often and care is provided by physiotherapy assistants on your behalf, or if you are having difficulty accessing financial records related to your practice.  

When you check an invoice, make sure it matches the patient’s records. Look for: 

  • The correct patient name 
  • Your name and registration number 
  • The right date and cost of the service or product 
  • The services or products listed on the invoice match what is in the patient’s file 

Here’s an Example of What a Billing Review Could Look Like 

Create a Process 

  1. Set a regular time frame for when you will do the review based on the number of patients you see and your pay period. For example, you might do the review once every two weeks or once a month.  

  2. Choose what percentage of your invoices you will review. For the first month at a new job, you may want to check all invoices. Later, this number could drop to checking a certain percentage of the invoices.  

Do the Review

  1. Get a record of all billing that used your name and registration number for the period you will be reviewing. 

  2. Randomly select invoices to review. The invoices should represent various funding streams. 

  3. Compare the randomly selected invoices with patient records to check that:  

    • You actually provided the services  
    • The services were actually physiotherapy 
    • No fees were charged twice 
    • The right services were billed for  
    • No services were missing from the billing record 

  4. If a number of invoices contain inaccuracies, check all invoices for the review period.  

  5. After the review is done, document the results of the review. Keep this document so you can show that the review was done. Example below. 

  6. If errors were found, take the following steps: 

    • Bring the issue to administrative staff or management’s attention 
    • Contact payors to cancel or correct any incorrect invoices  
    • Document what you did and the outcomes  

Example of a Reviewed Billing Record

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