What is Medical billing and coding and what role does it play in the Healthcare industry?

As a medical coder and biller you will have to help people with their questions on their insurance plans and you also have to work together with the insurance companies with their clients plans. They also have to ensure that patients are billed correctly and that insurance companies know what treatments they are paying for.

Doctors depend on Medical billing and coding to understand patients records so that they properly assign billing and insurance codes.

Here are few Medical billing and Coding systems used:

• Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) codes – CPT is the most widely accepted medical codes. CPT codes consist of all type of services a Healthcare provider may provide to a patient. Hence if a patient wants to know what kind of service he had received from his Healthcare provider he could refer to the CPT codes.
• Healthcare Common Procedure Coding Systems (HCPCS) – There are two levels of codes in HCPCS. Level 1 codes are the same as CPT codes and Level 2 codes usually refer to medical products, such as medical devices and not the disease or the procedure.
• International Classification of Disease (ICD) codes – These codes are maintained internationally by the WHO. These codes talk about the diseases diagnosis, the symptoms, and cause of death of humans. Also these codes are tagged with numbers to show which particular code was in use.
• International Classification of Functioning (ICF), Disability and health – This code talks about the disability and function of an individual in his environment.
• Diagnosis codes – These codes are used to identify the symptom of a particular disease. It’s unlike CPT which codes the disease for which treatment was given. So before billing the CPT code and diagnosis codes are put together and sent for billing.

It is said that no job is finished until all the paper work is done; no where is that more true than in the field of healthcare. The volumes of paperwork are so huge that some medical professional report spending more time filling out forms than treating patients. On a day to day basis a physician has a ton of paper work that contains charts with office notes, follow ups, lab reports, and test reports. So a lot of time is spent not only seeing patients but doing the paper work that goes along with that. Probably for every one hour spent on a patient; at least thirty minutes worth on paper work.

Many Doctors and executives say collecting payments from Insurance companies has become a headache, which is driving up the Nations Healthcare costs. To combat the problem many medical practices at healthcare facilities are seeking help by outsourcing medical billing and coding as dealing with the bureaucracy and constant changes in codes and procedures.

In closing, the Medical billing and coding system is an efficient means to get the hospitals and doctors paid quickly for their services.