This course introduces the students to the profession of medical billing and coding, the role of coding and billing staff in the healthcare workplace, professional growth and development pathways, and professional memberships and certifications. Students explore strategies for improving interpersonal communications, developing professionalism, and planning successful and meaningful career
-Inpatient coders have certifications allowing them to work exclusively for hospitals or facilities. An expertise in medical record review is a must, along with an up to date status with coding rule changes, regulations and issues for medical coding, reimbursements and compliance under MS-DRG and Inpatient Prospective Payment Systems (IPPS). Coders should have experience as well as expert knowledge in abstracting information from medical records for ICD-9CM vol. 1-3, specialized payment in MS-DRG and IPPS.
"Medical coding professionals provide a key step in the medical billing process. Every time a patient receives professional health care in a physician’s office, hospital outpatient facility or ambulatory surgical center (ASC), the provider must document the services provided. The medical coder will abstract the information from the documentation, assign the appropriate codes, and create a claim to be paid, whether by a commercial payer, the patient, or CMS." (Aapccom, 2015) It is very important that billing coders have a full understanding of how to properly use medical codes to prevent denial of claims submitted.
Double billing is when a patient is billed for the same service more than once. Double billing can occur when there is a product name change and also if there is an error involving the product's software. There are different reasons why a medical claim could be denied. Here are some of the reasons why:
The new job title could be a medical coder 1. I choose this new title because the medical coder is a health care professional who analyzes the medical records, medical charts and assigns the appropriate codes. Most of the job’s responsibilities of a medical coder are required for the inpatient and the outpatient coder’s jobs. For example, medical coder’s responsibilities are: reading and analyzing patient records, determining the correct codes for patient records, interacting with physicians and assistants to ensure accuracy, using codes to bill insurance providers, and maintaining patient confidentiality and information security. In addition, the minimum required certification of this job is CPC or CCS and RHIT with at least 4 years of experience. Those certifications are given to a Coder who can read and assign correct diagnosis International Classification of Diseases or ICD-10-CM, Current Procedural Terminology or CPT, supply Healthcare Common Procedure Coding System or HCPCS code for a wide variety of clinical cases and services, and read and assign PCS codes. The skills of this job are same as the skills of the
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!
Internal and outside auditors have a heavy role and responsibility in performing audits, preventing major accounting errors, and following (GAAP) guidelines. Several duties comprise the role of internal and outside auditor to follow specific protocol and ensure ethical standards are priority. The National Health Care Billing Audit Guidelines are relevant to address as well as why audit failures happen. Finally, how internal vary from external audit and why audits are overall important to health care organizations. It’s vital for health care organizations to maintain all necessary standards to conduct proper audits and uphold ethical standards for the financial health of the organization.
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
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
Some estimate that the federal government loses 30 percent of every dollar it spends on medical claims, due to medical billing mistakes and fraud. With so many loopholes and regulations surrounding Medicare, it is impossible for one person to know every nuance. However, constant diligence and ethical practices are a cornerstone of catching and preventing medical billing mistakes.
I really enjoyed this article, as it went into effective financial planning. The 2 major categories of cost are total charges (the patient's bill) and the cost of providing services. These 2 costs can be defined mathematically in the following indices: average revenue per patient day and the cost per patient day.
Medical Coding involves the records of the patients. Medical Coders are responsible for getting all the patients information and records from the office staff, that is how the coding process
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).”
The billing for services not rendered for are often done as a way of billing Medicare for things or services, that basically never occurred. This can involve forging the signature of those enrolled in Medicare or Medicaid, and the use of bribes or as Healthcare calls it, kickbacks to corrupt healthcare professionals. Upcoding of services is the act of billing Medicare programs for services that are more costly than the actual procedure that was done. Upcoding of items is also very similar to upcoding of services, but it involves the use of medical equipment. For example, billing Medicare for a highly sophisticated and expensive wheelchair, while only giving the patient a manual wheelchair is upcoding of items. Duplicating claims occur when a provider does not submit exactly the same bill, but alters small things such as the date in order to charge Medicare twice for the same service rendered. Therefore rather than a single claim being filed twice, the same service is billed two times in an attempt to receive payments from the government twice. Unbundling involves bills for particular services are submitted as fragmentary, which appear to be staggered out over time. Although, these services would normally cost less when bundled together, but by manipulating the claim, a higher charge is billed to Medicare resulting in a higher pay out to the party committing the healthcare fraud. Excessive services occur when Medicare is billed for something greater than what the level of
operate as a service provider. From this I will be able to gain a greater understanding of patient care. This collaboration between disciplines and the resulting improvement for the patient was identified by Hill (2006). Since I have started working within the NHS over the last year, I have had more opportunities to work with members of different professions both in the NHS and voluntary sector. This experience has helped me develop a better understanding of how patient care is made up of a multitude of smaller parts.
This is a great thread and I appreciate you writing it. Healthcare is a right and equal treatment should be available but at what cost? I have read some interesting articles on rationing health care spending or perhaps controlling cost is easier to accept. Either way, medical cost continue to increase and spending needs to be controlled which means denying something to someone but to whom and what? Is this what we want the government to decide or is this something as nurses we can make an impact and influence healthcare spending?