Why Accuracy Matters in Medical Coding

Coding inaccuracies lead to claim delays and denials, and compromised patient care. Some serious consequences include legal actions, lawsuits, penalties, hefty fines, and even imprisonment.

Let’s have a look at what medical coding is and why accuracy in it is important to the upkeep of hospitals and other medical offices. 

What is Medical Coding?

Medical coding is a process of transforming important information related to the collection of payment from insurance providers, including healthcare diagnosis, procedures, treatments, medical services, medications, and equipment, into numeric or alphanumeric codes. 

This information is taken from different sources like the transcription of practitioner’s notes, medical record documentation, electronic records, laboratory, and radiologic results, urinalysis, pathology as well as radiologic assessments etc. 

All the standardized codes need to accurately correspond to each aspect of medical billing for accurate claim reimbursement.

Why Must Medical Coding Be Accurate? 

Here are some of the important reasons why medical coding is important to be optimally accurate and compliant with current laws, regulations, and medical codes.

Ensures Accurate Reimbursement

Since healthcare providers are paid by insurance carriers for their services on the basis of standardized codes assigned to a patient’s diagnoses, treatment, and equipment, the claims should be coded with the highest degree of accuracy to accelerate the reimbursement process. 

Accuracy in medical coding is immensely important to ensure that the claims are submitted accurately and practices are reimbursed timely and accurately. 

Error-free and claims ensure quick reimbursement and reduce the likelihood of accounts receivable.

Coding inaccuracies can lead to erratic medical billing, which may not cause claim delays and denial, which, needless to mention, may result in delayed payments coming into your practice and adversely affect its financial health.

Ensures Safety of Patient’s Health 

Accurate coding helps to prove the necessity of the treatment rendered to a patient. It helps the insurance providers determine what services was provided to a patient and what resources were used in the patient care. 

The patient himself or the patient’s family may require access to this information at any time. Therefore, it is immensely important that it is absolutely accurate.  

Inaccurate patient information can not only affect the quality and accuracy of current and future patient care but also prove detrimental to the health of the healthcare facility. 

Helps Practices Forecast the Future  

Compliance with coding protocols not only helps the medical practices ensure that the billing to the patients and insurance providers is accurate and but also helps them forecast the future. 

Accurate billing helps the healthcare providers to analyze correct information on revenue, costs, claim denials, and enable them to and prepare themselves for any financial challenges in the future. 

Proper billing also helps practices make an informed decision about other aspects of their business like staff recruitment and patient outreach.

Final Words:

No matter what the size and specialty of medical practice, coding is important on different levels to receive on-time payment and create a record of patient care history. Without accurate coding, the information could be extremely difficult to compile.  

Coding can help healthcare providers track patient information in a simplified way.

It is important to make sure that each piece of your claim is optimally accurate for a smooth and seamless reimbursement.

In the nutshell, the success of a healthcare practice depends largely on accurate and timely coding and billing processes. 

How to Achieve High Coding Accuracy at Your Practice?

Today’s medical coding and documentation have become more complex than ever and medical practices are in great need of handing over their medical billing to qualified coders who have knowledge and expertise to expertly handle coding procedures and understand various regulations of both public and private medical insurance plan policies. 

To streamline their billing processes and catch up the sheer volume of coding required, many healthcare providers are outsourcing their medical billing and coding to third parties to achieve greater accuracy and compliance in their processes.

Outsourcing billing processes to a medical coding service also helps providers avoid the risks of non-compliance with billing and coding rules and regulations and therefore prevent costly consequences. 

A medical coding services provider helps the healthcare providers improve their efficiency and compliance, by increasing their revenue, accelerating claim reimbursement and decreasing the number of denied claims, allowing the practitioners and their team to focus on the core aspects of patient care.

Make sure that the healthcare provider you choose to provide you with a gamut of coding services with a focused approach, customized to specialty and subspecialty and are tailored to optimize your revenue cycle. 

If you already have an in-house billing team in your practice, you will need to make sure that it keeps up with evolving laws, regulations, and code to ensure optimum accuracy and compliance in your medical processes. 

USA Medical Coding Experts

Precision7 Inc. is full-service medical billing and coding company helping practices across the United States for more than a decade. We specialize in all aspects of revenue cycle management, including claim follow-up, claim denial resolution, payment posting, appeal submission, bill adjustments, and collection management.

We have a team of AAPC-certified medical coders who have been extensively trained to code for ICD-10, CPT, HCPCS, and HEDIS. We ensure that our staff stay on top of the constantly changing regulatory environment and implement necessary changes on time to maintain compliance with current medical rules.

We assure highly-accurate and timely medical coding solutions to maximize your efficiency and accuracy and reduce denials and rejected claims. 

Working with a professional billing company like us gives you peace of mind and reassurance that your medical coding is done to the highest quality standards and will boost your cash flow and revenue stream.