ICD-9 Coding Accuracy In Your Medical Billing

ICD-9 Coding Accuracy In Your Medical Billing

When you talk about the procedures you do and services you perform for your patients, you have words to describe what you did: patient eval, Pap smear, sinusitis.

When third-party payers examine and refer to the work you do, it’s simply broken down into numbers. Almost every medical condition, service and supply can be identified by a numeric code, primarily because Medicare and other third-party payers require numeric coding on claim forms.

They set the payment rules, based on these codes so the proper coding must be used so your practice can be reimbursed for your services.

It’s not easy to being fluent in the complex and ever changing language of coding, but being accurate in this is the key to reimbursement for your services rendered to your patients.

In addition, the medical billing codes you submit are used by the Federal Government to ferret out health care fraud which unfortunately occurs. Knowing the difference between your diagnosis codes such as 280 (iron deficiency anemia) and 820 (a fracture of the neck of the femur) will help insure your practice against medical billing fraud and abuse claims and will also insure you get reimbursed for all your medical billing claims.

If you’d like to avoid this scenario completely and simply run your practice, consider outsourcing your medical billing claims to the pros who know how to submit your claims properly and accurately the first time to make sure you get maximum reimbursements on all your medical billing claims.

Not only will you not be required to order CPT books every year, but your medical billing partner will keep up with the changes and advise you on any shortcomings they see in the way you submit your medical coding to help you and your staff maximize returns on your services rendered to your patients.

View all Articles by: Melissa Clark, CCS-P