Medical coding is a process that ensures that hospitals are suitably compensated for their services. Here is what you need to know about medical coding.
Why Medical Records are Coded
There are substantial amounts of data that we need to look at pertaining to each patient visit in order to determine why medical records are coded. When a patient comes to the doctor with a simple illness, the information that will be written on the medical report will not be much but when a patient goes to the doctor with a complicated illness or injury, the information becomes too much.
This increases the amount of data that needs to be sent to insurance companies. There are over a billion patients that visit the hospital each year and all the information will have to be sent to insurance companies. The system will be loaded with da9ta so medical coding makes it easy for all that information to be stored.
Coding allows information to be documented between medical facilities as well. Hospitals use the same codes in a given country. This allows researchers to access the information easily. If researchers want to track HIV prevalence, they can search for the number of recent HIV diagnoses using those codes.
Coding can also help hospitals check the effectiveness of treatment .
Types of Coding
There are three types of codes that are used by medical coders.
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ICD
ICD means International Classification of Disease. They are diagnostic codes that have a uniform vocabulary that are u0sed to describe injury, illness as well as death. The code was established by the World Health Organisation during the late 1940s. there have been updates on the codes over the years. ICD shows the patient’s condition as well as the doctor’s diagnosis.
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CPT
Current Procedural Terminology codes are used to record common medical procedures performed by physicians. CPT are number codes that are five and these numbers are divided into three categories. In these categories, the first category is divided into six ranges namely Evaluation and Management, Anesthesia, Radiology, Surgery, Pathology and Laboratory, and Medicine. The second category consists of performance measurement and they can also include radiology test results in some cases. These second category codes are optional and they may not be used in place of the first category.
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HCPCS
Healthcare Common Procedure Coding System (HCPCS) are set centred on CPT codes. These are services, procedures, and equipment that are not covered by CPT codes. They include things like long-lasting medical equipment, prosthetics, ambulance rides, and certain drugs and medicines.
They are also used to code outpatient hospital care, chemotherapy drugs, Medicaid, and Medicare as well as other medical services. These are the most important set of codes that are used in the medical industry. HCPCS codes are divided into two levels and the first level is the same as CPT codes. Level two of the codes alphanumeric codes that are divided into 17 sections. Each of the 17 sections is centred on an area of specificity.