ICD-10 EHR and ACO in Medical Billing and Coding
Medical billing industry is facing a lot of changes with challenges also. The ultimate aim of the industry is to increase the revenue for doctors and health specialists by delivering proper benefits for patients. The health care insurance industry has to take the changes and challenges to provide best for the patients. Proper care for the people regarding treatment is most important when it comes to medical billing and health care industry. Medical billing ensures proper payment for clinicians and health care specialists so that the payment is not delayed from health insurance companies. Medical billing companies eases the efforts regarding payment.
ICD-10
ICD-10 is the updated and most used coding standard used by most of the medical billing companies. There are many considerable changes in ICD-10 comparing with ICD-9. The health care companies and medical billing companies that are using ICD-9 should have to change their coding to ICD-10 standards. This is because to deliver perfect results in coding and billing. The treatment details, diagnosis and the complete care given to the patient is sent to the medical billing companies to code the diseases and treatment to claim the payment for the treatment to the doctors from the health insurance companies. In this case if the medical billing company uses ICD-10 coding format it will be easier for perfect coding by reducing and avoiding the denial rates. ICD-10 is considered as the most successful coding format because the medical billing companies that shifted their coding from ICD-9 to ICD-10 is seeing increasing accuracy and better results.
EHR
These days most of the doctors are preparing for ICD-10 since they find it highly successful. They welcome the updates the ICD-10 and they also recommend furthermore updates. The recommended ICD-10 codes should be updated to EHR vendors also. The vendors of medical billing companies should use ICD-10 in their EHR. Learning the updated ICD-10 codes is easy if it is done as early as possible. Due to some reason the coding specialist are hesitated about integrating the medical coding software into EHR practice.
The EHR system in hospitals
The reason is if the medical coding software and EHR is completely integrated there will not be need for medical coders. In less than 10 years or after 10 years the medical coding software integrated with EHR will replace the job of medical coders. But medical coders don’t have fear about their job in the future because ICD-10 in medical billing and coding will increase the job opportunities for the medical coders and they will be provided with the high salaries. These days most hospitals started use electronics health record software (EHR). The survey says 75% of hospitals in US have adopted EHR system but the question is whether they have included the medical coding software with EHR.
ACO
ACO means Accountable Care Organizations which is group of health care providers, hospital and groups of doctors aimed to give service care for fees. The medicare benefit is given to appropriate people through proper care. The main aim of ACO is to increase the care for the patient and to reduce the costs.
