{"id":193,"date":"2012-07-17T10:23:13","date_gmt":"2012-07-17T10:23:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.billingparadise.com\/blog\/?p=193"},"modified":"2026-03-17T04:32:39","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T09:32:39","slug":"are-we-facing-medical-coding-dilemma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.billingparadise.com\/blog\/are-we-facing-medical-coding-dilemma\/","title":{"rendered":"Medical Coding Dilemma Faced by Physicians And Medical Practices"},"content":{"rendered":"

Who Should Code????<\/strong><\/h2>\n

There has always been a raging debate in the medical community as to what constitutes a proper medical coding workforce.\u00a0 Is it best left to the physicians and surgeons, who already are stretched to their limits in their typical workday?\u00a0 Should nurses or PA\u2019s take up this responsibility primarily?\u00a0 Or should one follow the general industry trend, in the form of certified coders and billers<\/a>.\u00a0 The surgeons and physicians would contend that coding comes under the umbrella of \u201cbusiness aspects of medicine\u201d, and thus should be left to the specialist billers and coders.<\/p>\n

The Middle Path<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Once the founder of Buddhism, Gautama Buddha was meditating in the Himalayas after abandoning life as Prince Siddhartha, trying to find means to end suffering in the world. \u00a0Legend has it that Buddha believed that the extreme exercise of complete fasting, wherein he ate only 1 grain and 1 sesame seed per day, would free him of all desires and hence suffering.\u00a0 As time went on he became so thin such that he was able to touch his spine by feeling his abdomen, and could no longer concentrate on his meditation.\u00a0\u00a0 It was then that he accepted to consume a milk porridge given by a herds maid, and subsequently regained his strength for meditation and went on to achieve enlightenment.<\/p>\n

The Coding Middle Path<\/strong><\/h2>\n

If clinics are to attain medical coding Nirvana, a middle path wherein the knowledge of doctors as well as the expertise of expert coders is utilized, should be adopted.\u00a0 There are instances wherein clinics have been fined $10,000 per line item for not adhering to medical coding ethics<\/a>.\u00a0 The sight of a surgeon going into the operating theater carrying a CPT coding manual does nothing to inspire confidence in the minds of the patient community.\u00a0 Also you cannot expect a surgeon or physician to keep up with the latest coding updates, CCI Edits, bundling rules and what not by attending a yearly once medical coding refresher course.<\/p>\n

The Medical Coding & Billing Vendor<\/strong><\/h2>\n

It has been an empirical observation in the medical billing industry that synergy between a vendor and a clinic produces better billing outcomes than if the clinic were to operate alone.\u00a0 The vendor with his state of the art coding software, certified coders and billers, dedicated support personnel, and continual educational programs<\/a>, stands a better chance of getting that claim reimbursed than a typical in-house billing team.\u00a0 Moreover, it has been seen that the in-house billing team would better fit the role of an interface between the doctors and vendors, in making sure that each service coded matches the physician\u2019s diagnosis to a tee.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Who Should Code???? There has always been a raging debate in the medical community as to what constitutes a proper medical coding workforce.\u00a0 Is it best left to the physicians and surgeons, who already are stretched to their limits in their typical workday?\u00a0 Should nurses or PA\u2019s take up this responsibility primarily?\u00a0 Or should one [...]","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":360,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[745],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-coding"],"modified_by":"kiruthika","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billingparadise.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billingparadise.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billingparadise.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billingparadise.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billingparadise.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.billingparadise.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":450633,"href":"https:\/\/www.billingparadise.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193\/revisions\/450633"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billingparadise.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billingparadise.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billingparadise.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billingparadise.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}