Billings Books

I have worked with collections for 15 years.
After reading this book I have a complete understanding of the billing proccess from start to finsh. Also very good information on how the doctor's office's work. In clear english. Thank you for the resorce.

This book was disappointing for a college level reference. Perhaps better as a basic introduction, but not demystifying as promised.

I'll admit I was turned off in the first few pages of the book with a section that characterized medical insurance as a "game" and all-but accused medical insurers of deliberately delaying claims payment in order to make money, using an example that doesn't make any fiscal sense anyway.

Clearly, the authors have the "insurance is big business screwing the little people" agenda. Thus this book is not useful to anyone actually looking for a balanced or in-depth view of the medical reimbursement industry.

But for someone who's looking for a general introduction to medical office practice as seen from the eyes of the "little man" doctor, this is not a bad first choice. The roles of the various players in the office are correctly explained except for the frequent incorrect use of "medical insurance specialist." Clearly, the book is intended to build up those who feel that billing clerks are at the bottom of the office pecking order -- and that's not necessarily a bad thing either.

Anyone who thinks, however, that the book's little coding exam is actually all there is to coding is badly mistaken. The book also has a considerable paucity of information for those wanting to take the next steps.

I can't recommend it.

I have to agree with other reviewers who said this book was poorly edited. How this work could get past the proofreaders is beyond me! Perhaps they were in a hurry to get it published....That said, I did find this book very useful as I am considering a career in this area and really knew very little about what I'd be getting myself into. If you know a lot about the field already but want some detailed instruction on how to do coding, this book is NOT for you. After reading it, I have only a general idea of how it's done but couldn't code the common cold to save my life! However, if you're wondering what a medical biller and coder does, why this type of work is essential, and how the biller/coder fits into the big picture with insurance companies, healthcare providers, and patients, then I'd recommend this book. Even with my frustrations with all the errors, I still do not regret purchasing this book.

"Medical Billing and Coding Demystified" provides a very high-level introduction to the namesake industry. I was disappointed that the first 80 pages of the book provide no information about billing nor coding, opting rather to provide a background of the entire healthcare industry that, as a whole, is only useful to the reader if he/she has never been to a doctor in the United States. Given that the book has fewer than 200 pages of informative text, I argue that the book is fundamentally mis-titled.

The book is also poorly edited, missing various commas and hyphens that would enhance readability, not to mention the authors' collective credibility. In one instance, the word "loose" is used where the word "lose" is the intention. These types of errors may seem trivial, but I prefer that my professional refrences be more polished than this one appears to be.

Heresay, legend, rumor, unsubstantiated facts and technical inaccuracies are sloppily interwoven around the story of an expedition to find a Japanese submarine with two tons of gold aboard that was sunk in the Atlantic during World War Two.

Was part of the submarine's mission to exchange the gold for nuclear material that could be used to produce 'dirty' bomb? Was the surrender and capture - at the war's end - of the U-234 another attempt to do just that?

It's hard to say and the author provides absolutely no documentation to support a word of his theory. It makes books like 'The Brotherhood of the Bell,' 'The Hunt for Zero Point' and 'Japan's Secret War: Japan's Race Against Time to Build Its Own Atomic Bomb' read like scholarly tomes.

The narrative of this book is all over the place. Marine salvage, breaking codes, Japanese military attaches in Nazi Germany, submarines carrying vital strategic cargo, but the book has a very disjointed feel. The author can't put all of these topics together in a coherent story. The book is supposed to be how sinking 1 particular Japanese submarine kept the Japanese from building a dirty bomb, but in the first 125 pages, I couldn't even find that phrase mentioned.
I think the editor is more to blame here than the author.

This is a story of many facets: there's sunken treasure (two tons of gold), there's broken secret codes, there's radioactive uranium, there's politicians and it's World War II.

Specifically this is the story of the Japanese submarine I-52 carrying gold and other commodities to Germany and expecting to return with three tons of uranium. Because of the breaking of the Germand and the Japanese codes the Allies were fully informed of what was happening. The I-52 was sunk.

Beyond this there are other stories involved in this book.

1. There is a pretty good summary of what was happening in the German and Japanese Atomic programs.

2. There is some discussion about the development of a radiological 'dirty' bomb that Japan might use on the United States.

3. There is some speculation about Japan trying to surrender before the atomic bombs were dropped.

4. And there is the story of trying to get the two tons of gold from the I-52.

All in all, a lot of material for one book, but it is well handled and lively reading.

The premise of this book is total nonsense. You can't make a "dirty bomb" out of uranium oxide without first making a nuclear reactor -- and the Japanese never came close to succeeding at that. Even the Germans, who were far ahead of the Japanese in nuclear research during World War II, never managed to build a working reactor. In fact it is pretty clear that the uranium oxide that the Germans were shipping to Japan late in the war wasn't for nuclear purposes at all, but was for use as a catalyst in the production of synthetic fuels. People see the word "uranium" and they immediately think "atomic bombs," but this uranium was meant to be used for its chemical, not its nuclear, properties. Billings and his publisher should be ashamed of themselves not just for putting out such a shoddy book, but for promoting it with such baseless claims. The story of the I-52 is of some interest in itself, as is that of the U-234, but neither really had anything to do with "dirty bombs" or nuclear weapons of any kind.

"How the sinking of a single Japanese submarine assured the outcome of World War II" is the subtitle. Ok, let's assume I-52 was on its way to France to exchange gold for German-made ingredients for a dirty bomb to be used against America's West Coast. It was sunk before ever making the exchange. Had it not been sunk, it would have had to make it all the way back to Japan, the dirty bomb would have had to be constructed, and then another series of subs would have had to take the bomb across the Pacific. To my mind, I-52's sinking was way too early in the process to have been a critical event in the war. Now, if the dirty bomb had been built, and was almost to the U.S. on a Japanese sub that was then sunk, THAT would have been critical.

This book is pretty thin in terms of evidence. There are a lot of diplomatic messages quoted, and there is little doubt that gold was to be traded for radiological materials. But there is no evidence presented that gives one any confidence that there really was a Japanese plan to build and deploy a dirty bomb.

Overall, interesting in that it presented an event I had never heard of, but it delivers far less than it promises

If you're getting started in billing, this book is an excellent introduction. It describes the key parts of billing systems and explains a lot of acronyms. Thanks to Avi Ofrane for writing such a good book.

This is a very good starting guide for somebody not used to billing processeses. Moreover there is not so much books dealing with this discipline. I am lookinf forward the full version if there gonna any...

This is a good book for anyone who needs a quick and succint introduction on the billing process in Telecom industry without getting into technical details. It is a easy read. Will save days of research on google.

This is a good, but not terribly polished, high-level overview of telecom billing processes. If you've spent any time at all with telecom billing systems you'll be familiar with 95% of the information in this document, if not more.

The material is appropriate for anyone who's getting involved with telecom billing for the first time or who has been working on the periphery of the billing systems and would like to know more.

Don't expect a lot of detail - there can't be a lot in a document that contains only 31 pages of content written using large type and a lot of white space.

For example, the entire section on Hardware and Software consists of the following paragraph:
"The hardware usually includes high performance computers that operate proprietary software. Due to the complexity of hardware and software billing systems, continuous training is required in order to ensure quality services to the customers and to provide revenue assurance."

This 36 page book is very introductory in nature! If you want to know about Exchange Message Record (EMR) or Automatic Message Accounting (AMA) formats, it wraps it up in giving 4 lines of introduction for each. Not at all useful for professionals. Beginners should be able to find much more information on the net itself.. free of cost!

Fans of thrillers often lament the staleness of the genre, the fact that publishers shower us with the same old stuff season after season-formula stories that you can figure out after the first five pages. But fans won't lament Andrew Billings' new novel, CARNAGE, which is a bizarre and twisted tale that grabs you by the collar and holds on until you're thoroughly unnerved.

A respected Seattle businesswoman, Lauren Bowman becomes entangled in the militant animal-rights movement, and participates in a raid on a bio-research laboratory to free rats and monkeys. The raid goes awry, however, and a security guard gets killed. One of Lauren's comrades, a young woman named Megan, disappears during their escape. A few days later, Lauren finds a video in her home, which shows Megan being tortured and killed. Acting on the advice of her father, a crusty ex-con who owns a bar and marina on Seattle's Lake Washington Ship Canal, Lauren engages a cashiered drug-cop named Matt Burgess to help her find out who killed Megan, since she herself can't go to the police without risking prosecution for the death of the security guard. Unlike most stock heroes in mystery thrillers, Burgess is a believable and interesting character, a guy who suffers from clinical depression over his many failures in life. Billings uses him to preach a bit about the insanity of America's war on drugs, but this is a small flaw in a story that builds in complexity and pace to a climax that might leave you numb. You get a strong dose of the dark side of Seattle's drug world, and a taste of a murderous obsession that seems all too real. I can't say more without the plot without giving too much away, so I'll just say, "Try this one; you'll like it." In CARNAGE, Billings delivers what thriller fans crave, just as he did with his previous book, TAINTED BLOOD.

This book was a waste of time and money. The characters were wooden and one dimensional---I couldn't even sympathize with the heroine, Lauren--no matter what she went through. The supporting characters were not well developed at all, and the ending was predictable and flat and truth be told---totally disgusting. Andrew Billings also need have someone proof his story. Lauren, the protagonist was a vegan, she wore cloth Keds and hemp sandles because she abhorred leather, got rid of her Rover because of the leather seats, yet midway through the story she whips out her leather checkbook to pay her protector, Matt. Also if you find incest repulsive (I know I did and wish I had been warned first)stay away from this book.

Nice try, was looking for such kinda book for long .. i m not a medical person but love to study such kinda topic.

I love Gloria Ladson-Billings but was VERY disappointed when I received this article from Amazon. When I looked up this title, I was expecting a book. It was listed as a paperback. The article does not have the same title as the 'paperback' which was EXTREMELY misleading! I already have this article and obtained it FREE from my university. It is outrageous that Amazon is selling this article as a book and charging $21.95 for it! I am returning it and hope I get the refund!!!!!!!

This book per se is fine, if basic information is what you are after BUT if you already have Introduction to Telecom Billing by the same authors, BEWARE: DON'T BUY THIS BOOK ANYMORE!!! Except for a few changes in the captions, the content of this book is probably 99% the same as Introduction to Telecom Billing. I would have appreciated the candidness of a disclosure that these books are THAT SIMILAR! I WOULD NOT HAVE WASTED ADDITIONAL US$10. I IN FACT FIND IT DISHONEST TO BE SELLING THE SAME MATERIALS TWICE BY SIMPLY CHANGING THE COVER AND TITLE OF THE BOOK. ONE OF THEM SHOULD BE TOTALLY WITHDRAWN ALTOGETHER!

The author succinctly relates the past to emerging interfaces in the library of future. Such a futuristic dimension is best reflected in the last chapter, i.e., Giving up Prophecy. Billings has summarized, in this collection, his extensive experiences, and presented a summum bonum of his 25 years career - from grassroots to the bureaucratic heights, building infostructures that sustain any hurricane. Herein, intangibles are so nicely presented that even a novice in the field does not have to re-read the text or find much left for imagination. His thought provoking essays challenge information professionals to accept needed change. He is of the view that those who forget history will be forced to repeat it.

Given the strength of the book as a good assessment of successful ventures in information-sharing I recommend it to practitioners in academic / research libraries, as well as, library schools.

I ordered this book for self study, not for any class. There are no answers; they're all in the instructor's manual, which you cannot purchase if you're not an instructor. Calls to the publisher were met with indifference. The book itself is great, but if I already knew the answers I wouldn't have needed the book!

This book was o.k. but a little confusing