Medical Diagnostic Coding
There are innumerable diseases and treatments in the field of health and medicine. Without proper medical coding it would become impossible to do medical billing at a fast pace and get proper claims reimbursed from the insurance companies. Medical diagnostic coding is the same as medical classification and it is the process of converting various medical diagnoses etc into universal medical code numbers. The details are usually taken from a variety of sources within the medical record, such as the transcription of the doctor’s notes, laboratory results, radiological results, and other such sources.
What are the medical classifications used for? Well they are used for different applications as follows,
• Disease analysis
• Analysis of therapeutic actions
•
Reimbursements of medical bills
• Surveillance of epidemic breakouts
• Decision support systems
Besides diagnostic codes the other codes are procedural codes, pharmaceutical codes and topographical codes. The Medical Diagnostic codes that are used include, ICD-9-CM (volumes 1and 2), ICD-10, ICPC-2, NANDA, DSM-IV, SNOMED (Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine) (for psychiatric) and Mendelian inheritance for genetic diseases. Topographical codes are used to indicate special locations in the body while the medications are represented by pharmaceutical codes.
Professional medical coders working in physician offices, hospital outpatient facilities, ambulatory surgical centers can get certified credentials from The American Academy of Professional Coders (AAPC). The AAPC has 70000 members worldwide, of which over 51,000 have got the certification.
Medical coding service provider companies usually follow all regulations set by AMA (American Medical Association) and CMS (Centre for Medicaid and Medicare Services). Medical diagnostic coding procedures are done using different types of medical coding software like EncoderPro, FLashcode and CodeLink.
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