Significance of Maintaining Accuracy in Medical Coding - Healthcare Providers Should Work on It
€Make no mistake!' Accurate and complete medical coding for services offered by your medical practices is now more important than ever. According to latest CMS regulations, healthcare organizations and practitioners should improve their medical coding standards to facilitate prompt and efficient claim submission and reimbursements. And if you don't focus on accurate and comprehensive coding for your medical practice services, be prepared to bear the brunt of claim denials and underpayments. In fact, 80% of medical claims are denied by payers due to inaccurate, inconsistent and incomplete data about patient and medical services offered. Therefore, maintaining 100% accuracy for medical coding has been more important now than ever.
Medical care providers that code accurately do so with the aid of using cutting-edge medical coding software that ensures superior quality, promptness and accuracy. Accurate coding can benefit a healthcare organization or medical practice in several ways. For instance, it is important for medical care providers to know what it costs to deliver services as a part of practice-wide-cost control efforts. The only effective way in which they can be guaranteed to 100% accuracy is to base the process on medical coding. Furthermore, it becomes even easier and accurate to compare managed care contracts if the processes are driven by appropriate codes.
However, one of the most important reasons to ensure that your coding process is accurate is legal. The U.S Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S Department of Justice has made it a priority to be most stringent on medical crimes, especially frauds in Medicare, abuses, and similar kind of offenses, some of which are also punishable by imprisonment and/or fine. Therefore, if the medical coding process isn't accurate and pristine, it can drive you into deep legal trouble even if you don't have intensions of defraud. CMS regulations make it a priority to compare CPT codes with latest ICD codes for determining whether physician treatment matches with the diagnosis that is made.
Important Points to Consider for Achieving Medical Coding Accuracy
If you don't want to fall into unnecessary legal hassles and also improve the process of claim submission and payments, it is important to consider the following points -
€Harness potentials of online appointment scheduling software to capture accurate and complete information regarding patient medical records, registration and insurance.
€Make sure that only the most appropriate codes that you need are used in medical billing and claim submission process. There are three standard coding systems that are used by most practices - International Classification of Diseases (ICD), Physician's Current Procedural Terminology (CPT-4), and CMS's Common Procedure Coding System
€Use only diagnosis codes or procedure codes or both wherever appropriate
€Ensure that there exists perfect match between diagnosis codes and procedures codes; otherwise, medical claims can be rejected
€Leverage advanced medical coding software that minimizes the scope of errors and inaccuracies
Accurate medical coding should be considered as a matter of responsibility that every department of your healthcare organization should take seriously. Otherwise, evaluate huge financial loss arising from claim denials and underpayments, and whether your organization is ready to bear the brunt. Most importantly, are you ready to face the legal hassles arising from inaccurate medical coding?
Medical care providers that code accurately do so with the aid of using cutting-edge medical coding software that ensures superior quality, promptness and accuracy. Accurate coding can benefit a healthcare organization or medical practice in several ways. For instance, it is important for medical care providers to know what it costs to deliver services as a part of practice-wide-cost control efforts. The only effective way in which they can be guaranteed to 100% accuracy is to base the process on medical coding. Furthermore, it becomes even easier and accurate to compare managed care contracts if the processes are driven by appropriate codes.
However, one of the most important reasons to ensure that your coding process is accurate is legal. The U.S Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S Department of Justice has made it a priority to be most stringent on medical crimes, especially frauds in Medicare, abuses, and similar kind of offenses, some of which are also punishable by imprisonment and/or fine. Therefore, if the medical coding process isn't accurate and pristine, it can drive you into deep legal trouble even if you don't have intensions of defraud. CMS regulations make it a priority to compare CPT codes with latest ICD codes for determining whether physician treatment matches with the diagnosis that is made.
Important Points to Consider for Achieving Medical Coding Accuracy
If you don't want to fall into unnecessary legal hassles and also improve the process of claim submission and payments, it is important to consider the following points -
€Harness potentials of online appointment scheduling software to capture accurate and complete information regarding patient medical records, registration and insurance.
€Make sure that only the most appropriate codes that you need are used in medical billing and claim submission process. There are three standard coding systems that are used by most practices - International Classification of Diseases (ICD), Physician's Current Procedural Terminology (CPT-4), and CMS's Common Procedure Coding System
€Use only diagnosis codes or procedure codes or both wherever appropriate
€Ensure that there exists perfect match between diagnosis codes and procedures codes; otherwise, medical claims can be rejected
€Leverage advanced medical coding software that minimizes the scope of errors and inaccuracies
Accurate medical coding should be considered as a matter of responsibility that every department of your healthcare organization should take seriously. Otherwise, evaluate huge financial loss arising from claim denials and underpayments, and whether your organization is ready to bear the brunt. Most importantly, are you ready to face the legal hassles arising from inaccurate medical coding?
Source...