The Uses of Medical Coding: Why the Job of a Medical Coder is Indispensable to a Medical Practice

Medical coding is a key process in healthcare information management. The medical coder documents the services a medical practice or service provider provides a patient. He or she is adept at summarizing documents and assigning the right codes to the patient’s diseases and health conditions. These documents will then be forwarded to the medical biller for bills processing.

What are Medical Codes?

Diagnosis codes are standardized by various organizations to monitor the occurrence of diseases and health conditions, from chronic diseases to viral and contagious ones. This allows local health departments, health insurance providers, and government initiatives to track and prevent new cases.

Specific Uses of Medical Coding

Medical codes and classifications are used for the following:
-    Statistical analysis of cases and administration of medical response
-    Reimbursement
-    Research and decision-making
-    Surveillance of disease occurrence and pandemic outbreaks

Advantages of Using Medical Codes and Coding Systems

Medical coding seems to be challenging to newbies in the healthcare information field. Who could blame them? After all, codes merely seem like esoteric letters and numbers combined together to burden coders of making meaning of medical terminologies. But through proper medical coder training, such challenges may be lessened in the long run. The electronics records systems are also easy to use and provide the following advantages to coders:
1.    Coders will eventually get accustomed to the highly accurate codings and standard abbreviations, and will help them become better at editing codes
2.    Since the coding systems are automated, records can be coded quicker instead as compared with manual coding
3.    The new electronic health records system works with most database, saving you time from unnecessary conversions. The system also allows third-party review.
4.    You can add user-reported corrections to a thesaurus and make them available for future coding sessions
5.    You can access any type of coding system dictionaries
6.    You can easily modify scripts and platform for updating coding dictionaries and modify review standards
7.    The new coding systems also automatically produce audits that will ensure your employer’s compliance with 21 CFR Part 11.