Professional business service employed by a medical practice or hospital facility as an agent to pursue and attempt to collect unpaid or past-due accounts owed by a debtor that arose from an expressed or implied agreement. Generally, a collection agency is paid by receiving an agreed-upon percentage of the amount collected.

Relationship between the amount of money owed and the amount of money collected in reference to the doctor’s accounts receivable.

1. Individual who works with an insurance company to resolve billing and reimbursement problems. 2. Someone who works for a medical practice to bill and collect payments, solve billing problems, and help increase cash flow.

Administrative member of the staff in a medical practice who is given the responsibility of collecting from patients and insurance companies payments due for medical services.

To negotiate between organized labor and employer(s) issues about salaries, work conditions, work hours, and health and welfare programs.

Association formed in 1992 with the dual objective of serving the professional development needs of health care chief information officers (CIOs) and advocating the more effective use of information management within health care. Its mission is to serve the professional needs of health care CIOs and to advance the strategic application of information technology in innovative ways aimed at improving the effectiveness of health care delivery. Its supporting goals are networking, education, career development, information access, partnership advancement, and advocacy.

1. One of the punctuation symbols used in the diagnostic code book titled International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-9-CM) . It is used in the Tabular List section of the code book after an incomplete term that needs one or more of the essential modifiers that follow to make it assignable to a given category. 2. Portion of the intestines (large) extending from the cecum to the rectum.

Various medical procedures or tests to identify disorders or early signs of cancer of the gastrointestinal tract such as fecal occult blood test, sigmoidoscopy, colonoscopy, or barium enema.

Provision in a disability income contract that defines when total disability will no longer be based on the insured’s inability to perform his or her occupation but on the insured’s inability to perform any occupation.

1. A code from one section of the procedural code book combined with a code from another section that is used to completely describe a procedure performed. 2. In diagnostic coding, one code that is used to classify two related diagnoses.