Sunday, 17 January 2016

Medical Billing: The New ICD-10 Codes Are Now In Effect

By Lonnie Greenfield


If you know anything about medical billing, you may agree that ICD-10 is difficult to master. Men and women from all over the world ask the question, "How am I ever going to learn all of these codes? You may not know it now, but there are around 69,000 codes used. In ICD-9, there were around 14,000. You must have a good mental outlook for how these codes have changed. It is important to think about getting certified in ICD-10. Your employer is going to look at what you know about the new coding and if you can get them a high return from the insurance companies.

For starters, doctors want to know that you are certified or educated in a way that makes sense to them. They want to see that you can get them a higher return on their investment. A lot of medical doctors today believe in outsourcing their billing because they cannot find a qualified in house billing expert. It is hard to find a medical billing expert that knows a lot about ICD-10. These new codes were released on October 1, 2015 and was one of the biggest updates that ever happened.

Many men and women are choosing to go back to school in order to learn more about billing. It takes a lot of strong effort and desire to get to the next level. It is important to show your employer that you know ICD-10 because your job will depend on it. The new codes caught a lot of billers off guard. It is because ICD-9 had only 14,000 codes. The new ICD-10 has over 69,000. That is a whopping amount of codes to have to learn. It will take years for someone to fully master the codes. A medical biller will get paid more money based on what they know. If you can get a doctor a higher return, they will most likely keep you employed. If not, they will most likely look for another person to replace you.

It is said that a doctor only gets to spend around 10 minutes a day with their patients. The rest of the time is filling out paperwork and submitting it to the insurance companies. Today, it is important to document everything. You must be willing to document when a patient's health improves and when they get better. It is a hard decision for a lot of doctors to master.

A lot of medical coders are finding themselves having to study for their master's degrees. Many universities are now offering master's degrees in medical billing. It takes years to master billing because there is a lot involved now. When Obamacare hit the market, it changed the health industry forever. It is causing many doctors to leave their practice and work for larger companies. The main reason for this is because they are at least guaranteed a certain salary each week. If they have their own practice, they have no idea what the insurance companies will pay them. How can a doctor pay their staff if they don't know how much money they will be getting back from the insurance companies? This is a question that many healthcare providers are asking themselves today.




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