Medical coders are vital to the success of your medical practice. They keep your revenue cycle running smoothly by helping reduce or eliminate backlogs and non-payment.

Medical coders are faced with the unique task of translating patients’ medical records into codes used by insurance companies. This requires expert knowledge and special training. As a result, it takes quite a bit of effort for businesses to hire, train and retain these workers.

As with many things associated with the healthcare industry these days, the medical coding profession has its own set of problems.

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Here are a few problems that can be solved by outsourcing your medical coding:

1. Shortage of Qualified Coders

Some countries are facing the problem of an aging population. This means there’s a higher demand for healthcare services—including medical coders. In addition, medical coders are required to keep up to date with the latest coding standards as they are released.

The influx of new patients and changing medical coding standards over the years has led to lower productivity among medical coders. Unproductive coders in your medical practice will have errors on patients’ records and backed up billing cycles, among other things.

Outsourced medical coders are able to cover this shortage, resulting in fewer errors and a better revenue cycle for healthcare providers.

2. Expensive Training and Certifications

Medical coding is constantly changing. From annual updates of code sets to changes in insurance payment rules. The highly specialized nature of the medical coding field means that coders need to stay up-to-date on all these changes in order to function at all in business.

This requires new certifications every so often, which is usually very expensive and time-consuming. Such certifications include:

• ICD-10 Coding
• CPT & HCPCS Level II Coding
• Outpatient Coding (COC)
• Inpatient Coding (CIC)
• CPC-P Coding
• CRC Coding
• AAPC Specialty Medical Coding

Outsourcing your medical coding is the best way to eliminate this issue. When you outsource, the outsourcing partner takes on the responsibility of keeping coders’ certifications updated. This reduces your overhead costs significantly.

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3. High Coder Turnover

The high demand and low supply of coders mentioned above mean that qualified coders have many choices for new jobs. With this knowledge, they are generally quick to accept new employment opportunities that suit them.

This often leaves medical practices scrambling to find new workers to replace old coders, which takes time and can get expensive.

When you outsource medical coding processes, your outsourcing partner shoulders the responsibility of hiring qualified coders and focusing on employee retention to keep their staff engaged. That way, you are never in a position where you’re searching for coders, while your patient records are piling up.

There’s no doubt medical coding is an essential part of every healthcare practice. But with problems such as high turnover rate, expensive training, and worker shortage, it can be very difficult to build an effective medical coding team for your medical practice.

That’s where outsourcing comes in. That’s where Infinit-O comes in.

Infinit-O is the trusted customer-centric and sustainable leader in Business Process Optimization to Small and Medium businesses in the Financial Services, Healthcare and Technology sectors by delivering continuous improvement through technology, data and people.

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