Is Coding Driving Up Medical Billing Costs?

Inflation has affected all of these days.

From gas to groceries, bills are unfortunately going up and healthcare costs are no exception.

According to a recent study, medical coding is driving up medical billing costs.

Are medical coders at fault? Are costs really rising due to coding? Is there anything coders can do about it?

We’ll discuss all of this in today’s post.

About the Study

According to a recent study published in Health Affairs, billing and insurance-related medical costs are much higher in the United States than other countries.

And it’s getting worse. As an article commenting on the study notes:

“BIR costs ranged from a low of $6 in Canada to a high of $215 in the US for an inpatient surgical bill. In the US, that represented about 3.1 percent of the total professional revenue for the procedure. Providers also spent about 100 minutes processing the claim.”

So, not only are coders driving up costs, they’re driving up time associated with processing them.

Fortunately, there are a few things that can be done to address this problem.

What Coders Can Do

Here’s one important note from the researchers in this study that identifies the cause of these higher costs:

“Little physician time is spent entering billing-related information into the EHR system, as charge codes are either generated automatically or entered manually by a lower-wage or nonclinical teammate,” researchers stated. “As a consequence these countries’ billing systems either require fewer labor resources or require far less costly labor and physician time than the one in the US.” (Emphasis added.)

As highlighted above, the two biggest issues are automatically generated codes and low-skilled coders. Here are a few ways coders and healthcare organizations can address these:

• Gain more credentials and knowledge through a verified medical coding education program
• Start using more experienced and/or knowledgable coders
• Verify coding knowledge with exams and exam prep
• Move more toward an organized team of humans than automated processes
• Ask questions and bounce ideas off peers to improve accuracy and efficiency with coding
• Perform thorough training for new employees and medical coders

If you’re interested in gaining more medical coding knowledge to help address these rising costs, visit the official MCA Online website today!