In a separate section from the services and tests, you'll find a list of diagnoses. As mentioned before, these diagnoses will be found on a primary care receipt. Other specialists will have different diagnoses on their receipts, depending on the body system and diseases they work with.
In order to be paid by your insurer, Medicare or other payer, the doctor must designate a diagnosis. When you review your doctor's bill, you will understand the importance of making sure that the services perform line up with the diagnosis you've been given. This can become problematic for two reasons.
The first reason is that you may not yet have been diagnosed. That means your doctor will be taking an educated guess at this point. Unfortunately, for more difficult to diagnose health problems, this guess can color any other professional's regard of the real problem.
Secondly, this diagnosis, even if preliminary, will be recorded in your records. Whether or not it is correct, it can have an effect on your future ability to get insurance if it reflects the possibility of a pre-existing condition.
For those reasons, you'll want to double check that the diagnosis has been recorded as accurately as possible. You may find your doctor hasn't checked off a diagnosis in the list; instead, he may have written it in a blank space elsewhere on the receipt.
If you find a discrepancy, you'll need to work with your doctor's office to correct your medical record.
Once you've seen the words used to describe your diagnosis, you'll want to double check the ICD Code -- yes -- a completely different code system doctors must deal with.
