Billing: Coding Made Easier
These days, good software makes good billing
By Pamela Moore With some 8,500 CPT codes, 16,000 or so diagnosis codes, untold numbers of supply codes, and endless rules about medical necessity and bundling, it’s no wonder practices find coding confusing.
“The complexity of coding has been steadily increasing,” explains Bill Dacey, a certified coder who makes a living auditing charts and training physicians on coding.
How tough has it become? When a group of highly trained coders was asked to code, then code again, the same set of notes four weeks apart, they agreed with their own CPT choices only 85 percent of the time, and with their own ICD-9 codes barely more than half the time, according to Perspectives in Health Information Management (Fall 2006).
And of course, payers make matters even worse, with each throwing in its own coding and billing regulations.
Clearly some help would be appreciated. That’s where computer-assisted coding applications come in. These tools aim to make coding more of a science than an art — and keep you in the money and out of hot water. Continued...
