Medical coding is a critical link between patient care and financial reimbursement. The more efficiently your medical coders work, the higher your productivity statistics will be, and the faster you will be able to collect reimbursements.
The financial health of medical practices depends on medical coders’ ability to be accurate and productive. Medical practice will face financial downturns if your coding staff is under-coding, using incorrect CPT codes, or filing claims slowly. Inaccurate coding leads to payment delays, partial refunds, or even denied claims until you identify and correct the errors.
If you are a new medical coder, here are a few tips to reduce denials and increase your productivity while medical coding.
Importance of Productivity in Medical Coding
Medical coding is a crucial component of healthcare insurance billing and requires the knowledge of thousands of codes to give the payer a complete picture of a patient’s diagnosis and treatment procedures. Medical coders work as a bridge between insurance companies and healthcare providers; they ensure that providers correctly document and receive fair compensation for their services.
Medical coding demands a high level of accuracy and attention to detail. Medical coders must be productive because the whole coding process depends upon attention to detail. Significant billing problems can arise from even minor coding errors, which may cost practices money or land them in hot water with the law. Therefore, it is essential to be meticulous and precise when coding and billing.
Tips For New Medical Coders
There are many ways to increase medical coding productivity without negatively impacting the quality of work. Here are some medical coding tips to help your staff hit performance goals:
Strategize Your Benchmarks
Providers must have a strategy to establish and attain measurable goals before setting a benchmark for their workers. Make your expectations and standards clear to new hires while recruiting. Additionally, you should provide training to current employees to explain your company’s benchmarks so they have a better understanding of what you expect from them.
As part of your plan, you should prioritize tasks, set deadlines for each assignment, and designate time to work with teammates who need to know important details for a particular job. Consider eliminating repetitive and unnecessary tasks that can be handled by someone other than qualified medical coders.
Control Distractions
Almost everyone, from professionals to children, struggles with short-term attention and lack of focus. Notifications are everywhere, and becoming trapped in the constant stream of distractions is easier.
Given that accurate and efficient coding requires attention to detail, it is crucial to eliminate workplace distractions like TVs, radios, and phones from workspaces. These devices may be distracting and lower productivity.
Set up a specific time for uninterrupted work hours to reduce distractions further. Determining which tasks to cross off your daily, weekly, or monthly list can help you become more clear-headed.
Acquire Certification
Before assembling a medical coding team, it is crucial to have the whole coding team credentialed by the industry standard bearer — the American Academy of Professional Coders (AAPC). AAPC is a well-known training and certification organization for the healthcare industry globally. Acquiring the right certification improves accuracy, efficiency, and revenue integrity. For practices in Florida, partnering with the best credentialing companies in Florida can further streamline the certification process and ensure compliance with local regulations.
Their certification and training services guarantee that your staff is competent to tackle even the most difficult coding problems and is aware of industry best practices. Additionally, certified coders reduce the likelihood of fraud claims, compliance problems, and claim delays or denials.
Use Automation Software
Incorporating automation software in medical billing enhances coding efficiency. Medical coder productivity can increase significantly by implementing methods to automate the revenue cycle using Robotic Process Automation (RPA), computer-assisted coding, or Natural Language Processing (NLP).
On the other hand, connecting EHRs to your billing and coding software can save coders from wasting time switching between different platforms and provide instant access to patient data and clinical documentation. Coders can code claims more accurately without missing essential details for reimbursements.
Outsource RCM Services
You may hire experts to optimize your revenue cycle instead of doing it yourself. To handle duties like claims processing, code examination, and fixing mistakes for your employees, collaborate with an external revenue cycle management (RCM) company.
An RCM services provider can save your practice time and increase income by dedicating people and time to challenging payment collection. In addition to increasing your medical billing efficiency, this enhances your practice’s reputation.
Conclusion
Medical coding presents numerous challenges for hospitals and other healthcare facilities. If claims are not filed precisely and quickly, healthcare providers might lose a lot of money.
The key to preventing denials and claim rejections is that practitioners should simplify processes, use best practices to increase output, lower error rates, and ensure on-time claim filing. The coders may do this if they set targets, minimize outside distractions, obtain the required certifications to advance their professional knowledge, and use the newest tools to boost output.