As graduates of Grey's Anatomy, we are all familiar with how the medical field works. From the number of hours the interns' clock in to become successful doctors to how the equipment works, we are all quite familiar with everything medical. But have you heard about medical coding? Or, more importantly, medical coding outsourcing? Relatively evidently not because it was not mentioned in the series, right?
What Is Medical Coding Outsourcing?
The process of converting medical diagnoses, operations, health treatment, and instruments into universal medical alphanumeric codes is known as medical coding. Medical record data, such as transcriptions of doctor's notes, lab, and radiologic results, and so on, is used to generate diagnoses and procedure codes. Medical coding specialists ensure that the codes are accurately applied. At the same time, the hospital billing process involves:
- Abstracting information from paperwork.
- Assigning the relevant codes.
- Preparing claims to be paid by insurance companies.
Every time you visit a healthcare professional, medical coding takes place. The healthcare professional reviews your complaint and health information then provides an experienced assessment of aliment, how to treat you, and documents your visit.
This documentation is crucial to patient history, and the concerned doctor as this is the record that gets reviewed while they get paid.
Medical coding is not shown in TV shows because this work is mainly done behind the curtain, so patients and medical coders usually never meet.
Medical coding outsourcing is quite common as outsourcing such tedious work to third-world companies is economical and time-saving.
What Happens Post-Medical Coding?
Like the government, even medical facilities keep a tab on every individual diagnosed. All the data collected from coding is compiled and stored in archives for when a patient comes for the subsequent diagnosis, the previous diagnosis can be looked upon.
This is important for two reasons; firstly, patients tend to lie about their previous diagnosis for some reason or another. And secondly, even if they don't lie, there can be times when they forget about a treatment they once received or misplace their file or find it too tedious to repeat it every time they come for a visit.
To aid this process, medical record review companies are set up. The entire task of a medical record review company is to store the data of a patient and furnish it upon the request of the hospital.
How Does a Medical Record Review Company Help Doctors?
This helps in Clinical Documentation Improvement. Now, what is that? Let us again go back to Grey's Anatomy; remember how a team of doctors used to sit in the room and discuss the patient's prognosis and what sort of treatment to administer? The notepad they looked into was the records they furnished from such a medical record review company. To put it more technically, examining medical record data for completeness and correctness is known as clinical documentation improvement (CDI). The Clinical Documentation Improvement comprises a review of the illness process, diagnostic results, and any missing documentation.
A medical prognosis and treatment administration takes up a lot of work. What we see is just the tip of the iceberg; there is a lot of work in the background that we fail to acknowledge and do not even know about. So the next time you thank your doctor for the treatment, do not forget to thank the entire team, after all, each person was integral to you receiving the perfect treatment.
