Understanding What Medical Coding Is All About

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Medical reports are turned into a set of codes in medical coding. Making a crucial part in medical claims do these codes. The doctor's reports could be; diagnosis, a prescription and any procedures that have been performed on a patient by a doctor. Ensuring proper classification of diagnoses and medical procedures, medical coding is essential. Apart from helping in insurance claims, the other purpose of these diagnostic codes is keeping track of contagious and common diseases. Keeping track of the mode of treatment provided, procedure coding helps so click here.

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Medical coding helps in diagnostic request forms and reimbursement forms of insurance claims. In research and statistical purposes, they are also used. That there is uniform documentation of a patient's health history between medical facilities is ensured by medical coding. As a result of a patient having moved to another region or been referred to another hospital, this might be. By this uniform documentation, efficient research and analysis is ensured. This is used by the government and health agencies to effectively and efficiently keep track of health trends. Medical coding also makes it possible for efficient transfer of huge amounts of information and data, for instance, from a system loaded with data.

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There are different types of codes that are used but the most commonly used are; ICD and CPT codes. Standing for International Classification of Diseases is ICD. The problem that a patient was found to have and diagnoses is what they help in identifying. Standing for Current Procedural Terminology codes on the other hand is CPT. They are used to code everything from a visit to the doctor to more complicated matters such as brain surgery. Representation of the doctor's diagnosis and the condition of the patient ICD codes are used. CPT is divided into six ranges which correspond to major medical fields. These medical fields include; Anesthesia, surgery, evaluation and management, radiology, pathology and laboratory, and medicine.

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There is also ambulance and emergency medicine coding in the practice of medicine. It requires a totally unique set of codes because it is a specialty on its own. These codes are not used for physicians or hospital services. The documentation and coding requirements for medical and ambulance coding are different from each other. So as to produce an accurate and compliant claim the certified ambulance coder must take into account conditions. Condition codes must be used in this case. Since it is beyond their scope to render a diagnosis and only a physician can do that, the condition of the patient is considered in coding. Between the dispatch of an ambulance and its arrival the patient might have died. Condition codes are used in ambulance coding while evaluation and management codes are used in medical coding.

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Should you like to know more, you could visit http://www.ehow.com/about_4728211_what-medical-billing-coding.html .