How Medical organizations can excel with Certified Medical Coding Service?
A recent nationwide ICD-10 coding accuracy and productivity contest by Central Learning demonstrates the fact that the medical coding industry still needs to greatly improve in order to achieve a respectable and acceptable ICD-10 and CPT coding accuracy level. Although there was a slight improvement in inpatient and emergency department accuracy, the ambulatory surgery accuracy score decreased. The average inpatient coder accuracy was 61 percent and the average outpatient coder accuracy was 41 percent.
Medical practices struggling with their coding accuracy levels have a way to improve accuracy immediately by taking advantage of an outsourced certified medical coding service that guarantee accuracy and turnaround, and are less costly and less hassle for practice managers, physicians, hospitals, and providers.
Why Certified Medical Coding Services are needed?
In the present era, medical organizations need to think like any other business organization. In the stiff competition of the times, it is essential to optimize your revenue generation opportunities. The steady income you have today might slide down in the future, in the eventuality of further competition in the locality. So, there is a constant need to save for those days of slump. This is where the certified medical coding service can help. No, medical coding professionals will not advise you to overcharge the insurance companies or the patients. They will rather use their skills and data to help you accurately and correctly code the level of ailments and the complexity of services and procedures that were provided to the patients. And yes, the coding team also takes into consideration the most current industry’s standards.
How to differentiate an excellent provider of Medical Coding Services?
Yes, it may be true that there are as many medical coding companies out there as there are codes in one of the latest ICD-10 books. For starters, use the medical coding services provider that only uses the best credentialed and experienced medical coders and auditors in the industry.
Look for these signs of an excellence:
• AAPC or AHIMA certified coders with 3+ years of experience that go through a rigorous initial training and testing to earn their stripes of being certified, and annually keep up with countless hours of CE’s to keep their credentials alongside with a rigorous internal re-validation testing as part of their employment requirement. Additionally, and they continually work to improve their productivity and are on top of all changes in rules and regulations.
• Specialty-focused – coders certified and knowledgeable in specific specialty and skilled in coding expertise in a number of chart types, including inpatient, outpatient, same-day surgery, emergency department, observation, ancillary, recurring, and diagnostic and interventional radiology. Coders that have deep experience from facility, pro-fee, and risk adjustment is a huge plus!
• Coders have an access to state-of-the-art technology for additional resources
• Strict internal QA process – routine monthly quality assurance reports by coding management
• Contractually guarantee 2 business day turnaround and accuracy of no less than 95%.
Conclusion
In the form of certified medical coding service – healthcare organizations have found new ways to cope with the modern day medical business requirements. These services not only boost the revenue generation capacity, but also relieve the load on the internal teams.
