Medical Billing and Coding: Two Different Skills That Work Together

There are two critical administrative procedures that occur after you have received medical treatment. These are medical billing and coding. Performed by trained specialists, these are the processes that ensure your doctor bills you correctly for the services rendered and that information about your treatment is accurately represented to your insurance company for the purposes of reimbursement.

Medical billing and coding are actually two separate skills that lie at the core of the reimbursement system for physicians. Medical coding requires extensive training and experience. Each item of your medical treatment is converted into a code before it can be entered into a computer. Whether it’s a short or long office visit, a few stitches for a cut, an injection, or even an aspirin it’s entered into the physician’s computer for computation and subsequent electronic transmission to your insurance company.

There is a code for every medical product or service. You can only imagine how complex this is and clearly indicates a trained individual not only on behalf of the doctor but also to make sure the patient is not overcharged or erroneously billed for services never actually received. A medical billing specialist is essentially the doctor’s income manager and deals with invoicing and collecting monies from patients and insurance companies.

Medical billing and coding are indeed two essential skillsets that are the heart of the administrative functions of a physician’s office or hospital. If it were not for the trained personnel in this field, doctors would not get reimbursed from the respective insurance companies.

View all Articles by: Melissa Clark, CCS-P