Medical Billing And Coding Industry

When people think about jobs in the health care field, it can be easy to assume that most jobs involve direct, hands-on patient care. What many people don’t realize is that administrative jobs are equally vital to ensuring quality health care services. Medical billing and coding is an important piece in the administrative puzzle that makes up the vast health industry. As with most administrative jobs, medical coding and billing professionals need to have excellent attention to detail, as one wrong code or inaccurate statement can have an extremely negative

The most important element in becoming a Medical Billing and Coding Specialist is the training and certification need to enter the field and for advancement. You will need a program that provides an understanding of anatomy, physiology and medical terminology. This program should also navigate the three topics: ICD, CPT and HCPCS. These codes help you document the conditions of a patient and describe the procedure performed on the patient. When you have completed your training there are several certifications you can test for. The American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) offer certification for the Certified Coding Associate (CCA). You will need AHIMA membership and an exam fee ($199- $299), a high school diploma or

ICD-9-CM codes could before be labeled in just one code, now with more clinical detail to sort through, ICD-10-CM have many more codes to choose from that are much more detail oriented and specific.

Coding systems are used in the inpatient and outpatient settings for the classification of patient morbidity and mortality information for statistical use. The World Health Organization (WHO) developed the Ninth Revision, International Classification of Diseases (ICD-9) in the 1970s to track mortality statistics across the world. The International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-9-CM), is the adaptation the U.S. health system uses as a standard list of six-character alphanumeric codes to describe diagnoses. Globally utilizing a standardized system improves consistency in recording symptoms and diagnoses for payer claims reimbursement, as well as clinical research, and tracking purposes.

My career that I am researching for my junior project is Medical Coding and Billing. Medical Coding and Billing are two different jobs. Medical Coding is when a patient has any medical procedure or exam such as going to the doctor for the stomach virus or even going to the hospital for a broken bone. They work with the insurance companies by putting a specific number into the computer. There’s CPT Codes which stands for Current Procedural Terminology which is “ Codes to better understand the services their doctor provided, to double check their bills or negotiate lower pricing for their healthcare services. (About Health, 2014).”

Due to the growing inpatient/outpatient requirements, as well as the impending update to the ICD-10 codes; the spearfish regional hospital is in dire need of a new Computer assisted coding system (CACS) with ICD-10 code language. This technologies will assist the coding department with their day to day processes, as well as allow the hospital to continue with its growth to meet the higher demands of our growing community. Included in this report will be a detailed report of the technologies being requested, as well as information on these vendors 3M, Nuance, and Optum who can supply these

There are two trends that I have learned about from UMA and TV. ICD-10 replacing IDC-9. ICD-10 will provide the medical billing/coder with more descriptions for describing encounters and hospital stay for patients. Where ICD-9 had 3,824 procedure codes and 14,025 diagnosis codes, ICD-10 on the other hand, has 71,924 procedure codes and 69,823 diagnosis codes that is a big difference. The affordable care act also made an impacted on billing/coding since more people are getting procedures done. These procedures will need to be coded and documented for doctors and hospitals to get paid.

Are you and your staff anywhere near ready for ICD-10’s October 1st deadline? Maybe you’ve been overwhelmed just trying to implement all of the other changes happening in healthcare thanks to the Affordable Care Act, EMR mandates, increased Medicare audits, and value-based purchasing penalties; you’ve hardly had time to prepare for this latest coding switch.

ICD-10 is a huge change from ICD-9, the main purpose was to help coders code more specific. One benefit of ICD-10 is to give the doctor an electronic trail of proof for payments from patients, insurance, government, and hospitals. ICD-9 having diagnosis codes ranging from three to five digits but ICD-10 having diagnosis codes ranging from three to seven digits will automatically give you a more detailed code. Using ICD-10 gives you a lesser risk of getting audited. Giving a specific description on claim forms will make it harder to get the wrong code. ICD-10 will improve healthcare, the codes are more detailed making the data and communication flow faster. ICD-10's will help guarantee the physician reputation; the electronic trails are reported

The main and most obvious difference between ICD-9 and ICD-10 is that there is a significant increase in the amount of codes. ICD-9-CM has an approximate of 17,849 codes when combining all procedural and diagnosis codes, whereas ICD-10 has well over 68,000 Clinical Modification (CM) codes and over 71,000 Procedural Coding System (PCS) codes. There are also several structural differences between ICD-9-CM and ICD-10-CM/PCS. Some of them are:

Launched as a community for curious career seekers, medical coding students, new medical coders, and medical coding rockstars, this blog is for those destined for success. We assume a professional, upbeat, and witty mindset, because I believe the business of medical coding doesn’t have to be boring. In fact, it’s quite exciting!

In 1978, the World Health Organization published ICD-9. It was later modified by the US Public Health Service so that it could service the needs of American hospitals. This modification was named International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Edition, Clinical Modification (ICD-9-CM). As of October 1, 2015, ICD-9-CM was replaced with ICD-10-CM. ICD-10-CM was considered an upgrade from ICD-9-CM because it was more specific and contained many more codes than its predecessor. Most of the categories contained in ICD-9-CM were completely full with no room for expansion. ICD-10-CM goes into a lot more detail than ICD-9-CM. ICD-10 has been upgraded to contain up to seven digits as opposed to the four to five that were associated with ICD-9.

Due to ICD-9-CMS’ ability to provide necessary detail for patients’ medical conditions or the procedures and services performed on hospital patients, ICD-10-CM/PCS was implemented.

Throughout this paper, ICD-9-CM, ICD-10-CM, and ICD-10-PCS are referred to as “classifications.” They are also sometimes called “administrative terminologies” because they are commonly used for external reporting and other administrative purposes, such as statistical and epidemiological analyses, reimbursement for healthcare services, and public health reporting.

ICD-10, which is the tenth revision of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problem, refers to a medical classification inventory for the coding of diseases, their signs, symptoms and causes (Center for Disease Control and Prevention 1). The use of this revised version in the United States is scheduled to begin officially on the first of October 2013. Currently, ICD-10 is being used for diagnosis coding, in procedure coding systems and for inpatient procedure coding.