In a previous installment of medical billing goofs, we discussed what happens when you bill the wrong item to a carrier and how you can be charged with fraud, but what happens when you send a bill to the wrong carrier. What follows is a genuine story. It's kind of funny when you read it, but the truth is, it's far from funny. This is some serious stuff.

A medical billing company, we'll call them XYZ company, was sending out a claim for a patient, we'll call him John Smith, to Medicare Region A, which is in the New York area of the United States. Now in actuality, the name of the patient was a common name so there could have very well been many people with that name.

Anyway, the bill makes its way to Medicare Region A and the response from Region A is that they are not going to pay the claim because the patient that the company was billing was dead. Well, to make a long story short, the medical billing company gets on a conference call with Medicare Region A and the patient. On the one end, the patient is screaming at the carrier, "How can I be dead? I'm right here". The carrier simply responds that according to their records, the patient is dead.

Well, this back and forth goes on for quite a while with quite a few phone calls. Finally, Medicare Region A decides that they're going to go over the patient's records with the patient and the medical billing agency. So they begin the questions starting with name, address, etc. Well, when the patient gives the carrier his street address and state, the carrier responds with the following. "Sir, Texas is not in our region". Well, it turns out that the patient had the same street address as another patient in New York. Everything was exactly the same except for the state, which nobody bothered to check. So what happened was that the patient had his claim sent to Medicare Region A when it should have gone to Medicare Region C.

Everybody had a real good laugh about this, but the problem still wasn't solved. Now the claim had to be forwarded to Medicare Region C. The problem was that the medical billing agency was not licensed to bill Medicare Region C. They only had a package to bill Medicare Region A. So now they had to see if they could get Medicare Region A to forward the claim to Medicare Region C. Well, they could, but there was a charge for this. Well, the medical billing agency said no way. So what did they do?

We take so much for granted in this world. We expect everything we buy to work perfectly and when it doesn't, we throw a tantrum. Well, can you imagine what the programmer who creates your medical billing software feels like when he fixes one bug and then another one pops up? What follows is a true story, which just goes to prove that the truth can sometimes be stranger than fiction.

A medical billing software company was creating a new software package to bill UB-92 claims. Up until this point in time, they had only done NSF 3.01 specifications. So the first thing they had to do was get the specifications from the carrier and send them off to programming so that the programmer could begin work on them.

A few weeks passed and the programmer had the specifications completed and was ready to test the module. So they set up some test claims and transmitted them to the carrier. When the test results came back, they showed that there were several fields that were transmitted in error. No problem. The programmer made note of the fields and made the changes. He then transmitted the claims again and waited for the results to come back.

This is what happened.

In fixing the fields that were wrong, he inadvertently broke some other fields. Okay, no problem. He would simply fix the fields that he had broken. He proceeded to do this and retransmitted the claims back to the carrier. Much to his puzzlement, the original fields that were broken were broken again. Now he was really scratching his head. He knew he had these fields fixed. He even went over the source code to make sure that the fix was still in. It was. So what was wrong? None of this made any sense.

Well, he called together the programming team and they all looked at the original code and the fixed code. They all agreed that the fix that the programmer put in to fix the original problem was still there and thus should still work. And yet, it didn't. So what they did was put a trace in the code to see exactly what was going on.

When the trace got to the part of the source code that was fixed, it didn't do what it was supposed to do. It was following the path of the original code. This made no sense. Well, after much investigation they finally found, by accident, that the programmer was using the wrong library routine. Even though the source code was fixed, the object code for it was not placed in the library so it wasn't being processed.

The subconscious mind is a very powerful thing. If you have a negative or lazy attitude about you, then you will have no choice but to be negative or lazy. If you mope around and complain then you will achieve nothing. If, on the other hand, you are upbeat and cheerful, then you will generally have a good day and achieve quite a lot. If you dress successfully, people will treat you better than if you dress like a bum. Sad fact I know, but it’s the truth in today’s society.

I found years ago that in a home business you need to put just as much effort into your appearance and your attitude, if not more, as you did when working in secular employment. I’ve had to learn to improve my telephone manner, my enthusiasm on the phone and, by looking at myself in a mirror while speaking, I realized why I couldn't sell anything. I needed a check up from the head up!

With a home based business, if you dress business casual, comb your hair, brush your teeth and smile you will then start to feel like a professional. It’s this feeling that will come across on the phone and the more confidence you have the faster your business will grow.

Working from home should be exciting, after all how many people can say that their daily commute consists of going from their bedroom to across the hall to their home office? Working from home on the Internet should be something you do with pride. I have always been consistent in my actions and conscientiously believe and expect the rewards for my efforts to be granted to me.

You should try and answer emails within 24 hours, minimum. The maximum time frame you would want to wait to respond is 48 hours. To accomplish this you will want to set aside time each day just to respond to emails. Some say three times a day, morning, mid afternoon, and evening is best as it ensures everyone gets a timely response.

There is immense satisfaction in seeing people answer your ads, having people respond to your flyers, having prospects ask about your products & opportunity and respond in a positive way. Having people buy your products and assisting them in starting a home business should give you a great sense that you are helping someone improve their lot in life.

Make sure you are courteous and professional. There are some times you just don’t feel like answering a question that has the answer plainly on your website or in a sales letter, or some question you feel is irrelevant or foolish. The urge to send a fiery response may be there. If you do not feel you can politely and professionally answer, take a break. Come back after you took some time to cool down. Remember, the customer who asked the question may be basing their decision to get involved with you on your answer, so you want to be as thorough and polite as possible when answering. Do not push away a customer or potential customer with a hasty emotional response.

In a home based business your chief aims are to sell your products and teach others to duplicate your success. Out of this can come strong bonds of friendship, as your team develops and your network grows. There is immense satisfaction in running a successful Home Based Business.

All in all, our decision-making equipment is pretty sound. We don’t follow the lead lemming over a cliff. We can’t be fooled into thinking that a 99-cent lure is a meal. We don’t try to catch car fenders with our teeth. Then again, it wasn’t a dog who launched New Coke. So there are a few bugs – little design flaws of the mind – that can have big consequences.

People are clinically overoptimistic, for instance, assigning zero probability to events that are merely unlikely (such as a massive iceberg in the path of a really big ship). We see “patterns” in the random movements of stocks the way our ancestors saw bears and hunters in the scatterplot of the night sky. We make choices that justify our past choices and then look for data to support them. Not only do we make these errors; we make them reliably.

That’s the good news. Predictable errors are preventable errors. And a few simple techniques, like those below, can help you steer clear of the most common wrong turns. They can get you to your go point, that decisive moment when the essential information has been gathered, the pros and cons weighed, and the time has come to get off the fence.

Problem: Authority Is Not Bestowed Tool: Pursue Responsibility

For some, responsibility is simply bestowed: a princess is handed the kingdom upon the passing of the monarch; a favorite son inherits the family business. For most, however, the authority to make decisions must be actively sought.

Born in the Bronx of an interracial marriage, Jaime Irick thrived from his earliest days by tackling new challenges. In high school, he jumped into sports; at college, he took on social service projects. After graduation, Irick joined the military, qualified as an airborne Ranger, and found himself promoted up the officer ranks. Back in civilian life, he repeatedly asked for larger and stretch assignments. “I’ve never been fully qualified on paper for a job that I’ve had,” he told me, yet he so readily embraced his duties that ever more responsibility came naturally his way. With a new MBA degree in hand, Irick brashly contacted GE’s chief executive, Jeffrey R. Immelt, with a simple message: “I always wanted to run something.” The personal appeal to the CEO worked. Today, as director of sales in General Electric’s Homeland Protection division, Jaime Irick plays a significant role in one of Immelt’s growth businesses.

Madhabi Puri Buch did much the same at ICICI, one of India’s premier banks, which she joined in 1997. With little experience in fairly specialized fields, she tackled a succession of responsibilities, ranging from Internet trading to mortgage financing. Finally, she asked chief executive K. V. Kamath to give her a crack at running the “boiler room” of the bank, the back office that handles the enormous volume of paper, telephone, and electronic data that surges through the bank every day. “In the past,” she explained, “I had been given assignments where I had no experience. Yet they worked well!” Now she upped the stakes by taking on one of the bank’s least glamorous but most critical operations. Her friends thought she had been “sidelined.” Instead, Buch mastered the essence of still another banking function by taking responsibility for deciding how to remake it.

Let Others Work for Your Residual Cash Income

Every time someone else sells something, you make money with absolutely no effort on your part. This is the thought behind creating residual cash income and for many people has led to their being able to live a good life.

While a few methods of creating residual cash income have been determined to be illegal, there are numerous opportunities that are not only legal, they are also ethical. Think of Avon, Stanley Home Products, Fuller Brush Company and you can begin to understand the opportunities for people to make a residual income.

For example, one person is selling a product or service and they bring in a person to work under them, selling the same product or service in another location. The first person will receive a percentage of the sales from the second person. Now, that second person brings a third person into the group in another location. The third person makes a sale, person two and person one all make a percentage of the third person’s sales.

The residual income from the progressive sales get smaller at the top of the line, but person number one will still have created a residual cash income and eventually will have to do nothing but collect the money. Think retirement. Additionally, working with different companies several streams can be created, adding to your residual cash income.

The good news is that there are plenty of opportunities to join this type company and not be so far down the list that the only income you make is from your own sales. Getting into this opportunity close to the beginning will generate more residual cash income for you than joining in too late.

When you look at this type business establishment, considered by some to be multi-level marketing, research the product or service being sold. Determine if there is a legitimate need for it and is it attractive enough to generate public interest as well as repeat business.

There are a few multi-level marketing ideas that have been floating around for years touting the fact that you can create an income stream for yourself simply by recruiting others to sell products for you. Some may have a pretty good sales pitch and a decent product. The bottom line, however, is someone down the line has to sell something in order for anyone to make money.

Once you have found a product that you believe in and are willing to sell, you can then enlist others to join in the fun and work under you, becoming part of what is referred to as your downline. Even knowing that people over you, in what is called your upline, are making money you will have a residual cash income for every sale made by people in your downline.

The biggest challenges that many import companies have is finding a way to pay suppliers when a customer places a large order. As is common in import transactions, you must pay your suppliers using a letter of credit and then wait until the goods are delivered to your customer before your customer pays you. This creates a window of time, sometimes as long as 90 days, between the time that you pay your suppliers and the time that your customers pay you.

But what happens if you don’t have the funds to obtain a letter of credit? Or, if you can’t wait for a long time to get paid? Do you pass on the order? Well, you don’t have to. Not if you decide to use purchase order finance.

Purchase order financing is a tool that allows you to easily make large orders – even if you don’t have the money to pay suppliers and if your company is new. It provides you with up to 100% of the funds needed to pay your foreign suppliers, enabling you fulfill your large orders and grow your company. And it works for almost all companies because of a unique feature. Almost any company can qualify, provided you have a purchase order from a government agency or a strong commercial customer. Indeed, your collateral for the transaction is the reliability of your customer. This make po financing a very unique tool for importers that are buying goods from China, Taiwan, Brazil, Russia or almost any country in the world.

Purchase order financing easily integrates to your company and is easy to use. Here is a sample transaction:

1. Your commercial or government customer places a purchase order with you

2. Your company places an order with your local or foreign supplier

3. The purchase order finance company provides a letter of credit to pay your supplier

4. Your supplier delivers the goods to your customer 5. The transaction is settled once your customer pays for the goods

As you can see, this transaction is completed with little if any of your own funds and the financing company covers most costs. This is ideal for new companies or companies that have exhausted their capital.

Many times, a customer may take up to 60 days to pay for the goods. This is especially true if you are selling goods to large companies that demand payment terms. In that case, you may need to also use factoring financing. Combining invoice factoring, which costs less than po financing, with po funding enables you to lower the total transaction cost.

What's the first thing you look for when buying a product or service online? Ok, after the price? ;-)

That's right - testimonials! Rave reviews from other people who have used the product or service that you're considering investing in can make a huge difference in whether or not you take out your credit card, right?

When potential clients or customers visit your website, they want to see the same thing. It makes them feel that much more comfortable that they're making a good choice in handing over their money to you. Make it easier for them to buy (and easier for you to make a sale) by including testimonials for every product or service you offer.

But not just any nice words will do. You want your testimonials to be results-based so as to do the selling for you. Here's what I mean:

1. Use the Before/After Template

Ideally, your testimonials should tell a very short story about where your client or customer was at before they starting using your product or working with you, and then tells the great results they've gotten since.

For example, one of my clients wrote this testimonial for my 21 Easy & Essential Steps to Online Success System:

"Hi Alicia,

I also wanted to chime in about how happy I am with your 21 Steps program.

I have purchased several other marketing programs, and while they all provided good information, none provided the steps, resources and direction I was looking for.