Getting patients the right care is the job of doctors and other health care professionals. They provide the service to clients, while medical billing services generate the cost of treatment to keep the hospital or doctor’s office running. Medical billing positions include medical coders, who are vital to the process. These coders also work in medical facilities, hospitals, or doctor’s offices, and they must be members of the American Academy of Professional Coders to crack into the field. Coders assess the treatment a patient has received and assign the appropriate medical code for medical billing professionals to submit to insurance. Medical coder professionals use specific international codes like ICD-9-CM to classify diseases. This code helps insurance process the claim accurately. The coder also checks all the relevant information in a patient’s medical record to confirm what work was actually done. Once they have done this, they assign the correct code to patient’s file for billing purposes.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are nearly 180,000 available medical coding jobs in America, and the need for these jobs will reach nearly 40,000 by the year 2020. With these numbers on the rise, medical billing services that include medical coding and billing are gaining in popularity. Busy doctor’s offices prefer to outsource their billing needs. A medical billing specialist does not have to deal with the day to day functioning of a medical setting and can focus solely on radiology billing, mri billing, or any other specific needs of an office, hospital, or medical facility. This direct approach to medical billing can provide patients with consistent information about their claims, and also increase the accuracy of the bills. The result is increased patient satisfaction and more focus on quality care.