Date Of Service for Medical Claims – The date of service of a medical claim is the date the medical provider actually saw the patient. Date of service is important because a medical factoring company wants to make sure the provider actually saw the patient. In recent years one of the biggest areas of medical claims fraud has been providers falsifying the date of service and billing for patients who never actually saw a provider. To this end many medical claims providers and payors have increase the requirements to collect valid identification from a patient on the date of service. The date of service can vary from the date the claim is billed due to a lag in the ability of the provider to bill the claim on the same day they see the patient. This is more common for smaller medical providers and those who do more of their medical billing paperwork manually. The lag time between the date a medical claim is billed and the date of service is also another metric that can be used to evaluate billing efficiency. The smaller the gap between the date of service and the date the claim is billed the quicker the medical claims payments should arrive.
