Theodore Roosevelt once said: “Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain & difficulty.” While the former president’s outlook is a bit extreme, sometimes the most challenging things we encounter garner the greatest rewards.
There’s no denying that healthcare careers are complicated. Professionals in these fields attempt to understand, interpret and diagnose problems in the human body, the most complex organism on the planet, and this includes the significant role a medical coding specialist plays, and why MDofficeManager places a premium on medical coding specialists.
What exactly is medical coding?
Medical coding is a component of the medical billing process that assigns codes to claims from a patient visiting a healthcare facility. The coder is responsible for allocating medical codes (CPT, ICD and HCPCS) to the claim. Put simply, whenever a patient goes to a clinic or hospital for any reason, the visit has specific medical codes assigned to help track the reason of the visit for medical and billing purposes.
Is medical coding difficult?
Medical coding is not difficult for the right person. It requires attention to detail because nothing can be missed when processing patient information and everything needs to be assigned the proper code.
Generally medical coding specialists read and review medical documentation provided by physicians and other health care providers in order to obtain detailed information regarding their disease, injuries, surgical operations, and other procedures that are translated into numeric codes.
The most challenging point comes from having a solid knowledge of anatomy, physiology, pathophysiology, and medical terminology to successfully learn the coding systems. Having to acquire and retain this diverse knowledge base is the reason MDofficeManager only hires AAPC Certified Coders.
What are the most challenging aspects of medical coding?
Human anatomy has a lot of grey areas but medical coding is black and white. The challenge comes in transforming cloudy and complex medical symptoms into clear, discernible codes.
For example, ICD-10 coders must understand the symptoms that are integral to a disease. The doctor will pass along case information with notations about the symptoms and coders are responsible for pulling out the important parts to document.
Attention to detail is critical. A medical coding specialist has to re-check his/her work against the alphabetical coding list which can be time consuming and tedious, but ultimately helps to eliminate errors.
It is also challenging to keep up with industry changes. Existing medical codes are updated, changed or discarded every year. And the most important part for learning medical coding is applying the guidelines set by the industry regulators.
It is critical for professionals working in the field to stay on top of these changes to avoid documenting inaccurate information.
To sum it up…
If you are willing to put in some work at the front end and to keep up to date on all of the changes, the challenges of becoming a valued medical coding specialist will be even easier to overcome. A lot of variables can occur from the time a patient arrives at a clinic to the time that they leave, and it is up to a medical coding specialist to ensure that nothing gets missed.
Medical Coding is one of the KEY’S for MDofficeManager’s success
As a provider or staff member, are you troubled with:
- Cash flow spiraling downhill.
- Lost checks.
- Screaming at insurers over the phone.
- Sleepless nights.
- Problem coping with rules and constant updates.
With higher self-pay and compliance increasing exponentially, there is greater opportunity for risk. Medical coding is a key activity that impacts the financial health of your practice.
Have you thought why medical coding services must be accurate, error free & quick? The reason is that without coding breaches there is a higher reimbursement rate and a constant flow of income. Accurate and error-free medical coding not only ensures that medical claims are reimbursed timely, but also takes care that you get paid optimally.
MDofficeManager Benefits
- Higher profits.
- Easy-to-access documentation.
- Optimized workflow.
- Timely & accurate reimbursements.
- AAPC credentialed coders.
- Medical coding audits.
- Efforts to reduce RAC audits.
- Specialty-specific versatile coding services.
- Hospital/in-patient coding.
- Emergency room e-code evaluation.
- Accurate & stringent quality checks.
- Coding turnaround.
- Quick setup and go-live.
- ICD-10 readiness.
- ICD-9-CM coding validations.
- CPT and ER with E&M medical coding.
- ICD-9 coding based on AMA and CMS guidelines.
- Compliance with all medical coding systems, such as ICD, CPT and HCPCS.
- Variety of statistical reports generated.
