Tuesday 13 November 2012

What Are Medical Coding Consultants?

By Wendy Dunn


There are a number of health care facilities and providers who are looking to improve upon their medical coding in terms of accuracy as well as financial effectiveness. Within the overall framework of the health care system, medical coding has a number of responsibilities and is a large part of a effectively operating system that can help to create better cost savings. There are a number of different pieces within the health care system that are reliant on how well coded a patients chart is, and require quality coding to operate successfully. While the patient and the medical coder may not connect directly, the actions of a medical coder including their accuracy and work quality can affect the patients care and costs.

There are a number of health care providers and health care facilities that utilize an in-house medical coding department as a way to take care of the medical coding needs and the communication between health care providers and health insurance companies. How these patients charts are coded is what is used by insurance companies as a way to determine reimbursement of the cost of services and treatments provided for the care of their plan's members.

There are a number of possible negative effects of having a patients chart that is inaccurately coded, takes too long to code and turn around to the insurance company, or is riddled with mistakes. This may cause the amount of reimbursement to be far too little in return for the services, or could slow down the turn-around time of reimbursement from the insurance company which can also lead to a slower or inconsistent cash flow which directly effects the health care facility's ability to fund their practice. Since there are so many negative effects of having charts coded improperly or inaccurately, a number of health care facilities and providers will look to the help of professional medical coding consultants as a way to increase accuracy and quality.

Medical coding consultants are well trained, very experienced and are typically certified as professional medical coders with a lot of experience in a number of different coding situations. These professionals will work within your department and help to find the weaknesses as well as where the errors and slow return time are originating from. Their experience will be able to help and create a plan and a system that will be more effective as well as cost efficient. Goals of medical coding consultants include creating higher reimbursement numbers as well as helping to produce system that will allow a more steady cash flow for the health care facility to operate with.

To learn more about Medical Coding Consultants go to Altegra Health.




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