Tips For A Better Hospital Coding

By Angel Dudley


Hospital coding is a very important task in the medical field. That is why knowing some tips about this will surely help out a lot. When those people who have endeavored in this field have some difficulties with their job, they should be able to get over it with the help of the great tips that they can find in various references nowadays.

For those coders who want to do a good job with the said task, they will have to follow several tips to ensure proper documentation. Regardless if one is an amateur or a professional, it is only natural for them to follow these tips. With the said tips, one can establish the rules for the documentation. Here are several of the tips that will set the rules for this task.

First of all, it is only appropriate to document blood pressure, weight, and height. By doing this, the person can review a portion of one's health history. It will also become easier for the person to see what the changes in one's musculoskeletal system and blood pressure are. Of course, it also allows the person to determine what these changes signify.

The codes that are to be used for the recording should be personally decided by the one in charge of the records. With this, it will not be easy for other people to contaminate one's records. They will not be downcoding or upcoding the said record. If it ever happens, it will result to skewed statistics and even loss of revenue. There is no one who will benefit from these results.

The physicians entrusted with the patient's life are usually given referrals or consultation jobs. Since this is the case, the coder will have to remember the difference between the two. A referral is meant to hand over the treatment of a patient from a referring physician to a new one. Consultation, on the other hand, is for diagnosing and assessing a patient's condition.

Modifiers are very important for this too. That is why it is only recommended for the person to focus and not confuse the modifiers. A modifier is usually being used because there is no CPT code which can accurately describe the work that was done. One modifier is meant for reduced services while the other is for discontinued procedure.

An ABN or advanced beneficiary notice might be useful. That is why it is recommended to get this from a Medicare patient. The ABN will typically contain the list of the items that the said insurance policy will and will not pay for. Signing this ABN means that the patient agrees to paying for the entire bill when the insurance policy denies the claim.

An Incident To is very common in the medical field. This is especially used when the patients involved are Medicare policy holder. They will be used to signify that a non-physician practitioner is providing treatment for the patient. Of course, the presence of a professional physician is still requested even with the treatments of a non-physician practitioner.

It will be a different matter with the private payers though. While many allow the non-physician practitioners to treat them, there are those who only limit the interaction of the said practitioners to supervision tasks. Such situations should also be cited in the hospital coding appropriately.




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