The Demand For Medical Coding Experts Continues To Grow
Medical coding is a method used by doctors and other medical practitioners to transfer symptoms and diagnoses into simple codes. These codes then facilitate payments from medical insurance companies and also generate statistics for government and research use. Medical coding uses several languages such as ICD-9 or CPT-4. ICD-9 is the diagnostic code and CPT-4 the procedure code. The widespread use of medical billing programs means that the use of incompatible codes is quickly spotted. For example rather than submit a medical bill to Medicare that said a new patient was diagnosed with “Type 1 Diabetes without Ophthalmic Manifestations” the form would list “250.01” using the ICD-9 diagnostic code and “92004” for the CPT-4 procedural code . The Code sets used are governed by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act(HIPAA)of 1996 which sought to standardize all aspects of the health insurance business.
If you are an analytical person and like working on computers then medical coding can be a rewarding career. There is a high demand for experienced coders and medical billers, as there is an abundance of healthcare services and they all need to get paid. Adding to the demand is government legislation aimed at standardizing and promoting electronic billing, and the increased scrutiny of medical records by health insurance companies and the government. You can start a coding career with just a high school diploma and then progress by taking online courses or courses at night school. It is possible for experienced coders with recognized qualifications to earn up to $40,000 per year. A good knowledge of human biology and mathematics are useful.
As stated earlier, one of the languages used for coding is ICD-9. This was developed in the late 19th century to allow the classification of diseases. The ICD codes, or International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, to give them their full title, were later adopted by the World Health Organization and are generally updated every 10 to 20 years. ICD-9 was released in 1979 but was later found not to be ideal for classifying diagnostic procedures, so a modified version was adopted called ICD9-CM - the CM stands for clinical modification. Although ICD-9 was superseded by ICD-10 it is still widely in use.
CPT codes or current procedural terminology codes are currently on version 4 hence CPT-4. These codes are published by the American Medical Association and are used to uniformly describe medical procedures. All codes are 5 digits and there are almost 8,000 of them. These are reviewed each year and codes are added and deleted so it is imperative that users have an up to date list available. Due to the complexity of the codes proper training is highly recommended.
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