Skip to main content

Medical Billing Code

In medical billing, it is most likely that you will be dealing with medical billing codes. Just how important are they?

Well, let's start with...very. They are fundamental tools to medical billing. Without medical billing codes, there would not be any point to the whole profession.

Medical billing is often described as the doctor's key to getting paid for services rendered. They are also defined as practice management. But what few people know is medical billing codes are the key to medical billing. The whole process depends on it.

Let's start with defining medical billing as a process. We all know that the process starts with the patient's visit where the notes on what kind of treatment procedures were made and what diagnoses the doctor came up with are made on the patient's medical record. These notes are then collected and matched up with a set of medical billing codes which then become the basis for creating the billing record. Afterwards, the billing record will serve as the insurance claim which the biller will send either to a clearinghouse or directly to an insurance company.

Now, you see just how important medical billing codes are?

There are several types of medical billing codes used in the healthcare industry. These medical codes are often separated into chapters and categories. For each type of diagnoses or treatment, a different set of medical billing codes is reserved for it.

The medical billing codes are organized into seventeen chapters. They are listed in numerical order in the tabular list. Medical billing code categories consist of thee-digit groupings of a single disease or a related condition. If there is further clinical detail, this is show by medical billing codes comprised of four or five digits.

The ICD-9 Codes

The ICD-9 medical billing code has two volumes that are used in medical practices. These are the Volume 1(the Tabular List) and Volume 2 (Alphabet Index). In order to find the right code, you would need to use the alphabet index first where the main terms and related concepts are located.

The V Codes

The V medical billing codes are identifying codes but instead of identifying the pathology of the disease, they instead identify encounters for reasons other than illness or injury. V codes apply on healthy patients receiving routine services or for therapeutic encounters, for a problem that is not currently affecting the patient's condition and for preoperative evaluations.

Popular posts from this blog

Medical Billing Careers

Medical billing careers are among the top contenders of the recent job explosion in the healthcare industry. In fact, the Bureau of Labor Statistics states that it is one of the top twenty occupations in healthcare. Medical billing careers are pivotal to the success of the medical practice. It is often referred to as the doctor's key to getting paid for the services he rendered. Medical billing careers encompass a wide scope and a broad range of responsibilities as it includes front office tasks, among others, in its list of things to do. Nature of Work Success in medical billing careers is not as easy as it is often made out to be by those ads you see in the classified section of the local newspaper or the Internet. Not everyone who enters into one end up rich. Competition is fierce and in the end, the competent ones are the only ones who survive. To achieve some measure of success in medical billing careers, you will need to know all the basic concepts related to the jo...

Facing Confidentiality and Electronic Medical Records Concerns

With more and more hospitals employing the electronic medical record as their standard data collection, storage and retrieval system, there are those who are concerned with the risks in the confidentiality and electronic medical records system. The old way of doing things required a lot of paperwork. This meant more office space was allotted for record keeping. This usually meant a filing cabinet with a key as its main security defense against other people. The talk of confidentiality and electronic medical records keeping true to that sense is only a hype, or fluke. The concerns of confidentiality and electronic medical records falling into the wrong hands are grossly exaggerated. To put these concerns on confidentiality and electronic medical records intrusive capability, the software developers have added several security measures to insure that only those who need to know about your information get it and the information that the doctor is reading is really about you: * ...

Medical Billing Career

People in the world today are not getting any younger. As they age, the need for working professionals in the medical and healthcare services professions will continue to increase. That is why there is no more right time to get into a medical billing career than now. The sheer number of new patients and insurance claims alone ensure that medical billing career will be in-demand for many years to come. If you pursue a medical billing career, there is no doubt that you are pursuing a career that is greatly needed. Medical billing has been frequently described as the doctor's key to getting paid. In more accurate description, medical billing refers to practice management. More often than not, processing medical and insurance claims is a very time-consuming task but unfortunately, it is something that all medical offices and clinics must take up. Coding errors and erroneous patient information are usually much higher if the person handling your medical billing and accounts pa...