Billers & Coders to help Practices assess their ICD-10 Readiness in 2014!
Physicians will need experienced billers and coders to assess ICD-10 readiness of their practice. With the deadline extended to 2015, now is the right time to start preparing. Billers and coders will play a vital role in helping providers conduct ICD-10 assessment to identify deficiencies, improve training and education and reduce any potential risks associated with revenue cycle.
Industry facts
| According to a survey by WEDIs, approximately 80% of healthcare providers will fail to complete their business changes and start testing before 2014 |
| Conversion to ICD-10 will cost health care industry between $475 million and $1.5 billion over ten years due to staff training, change in systems and loss of productivity |
Billers and coders required for end-to-end assessment of coding and clinical processes:
- Necessary for effective ICD-10 implementation, coders and billers will be bridging the gap between physicians and documentation and payers and claims processing. They will have to reinvent themselves, tackling revenue related challenges ahead of ICD-10
- Coders and billers will play a major role in helping providers assess the strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities with respect to ICD-10 transition. This will help in identifying challenges at organizational level
- For IT assessment, experienced coders will be required to identify and inventory each system, database and application that currently captures, retains and reports ICD-9 codes. This will help understand what type of system changes will be needed for ICD-10 conversion
- In order to assess hospital operations for ICD-10, coders and billers can help focus on elements of patient transaction cycle such as clinical documentation, coding, billing, claims creation and submission
Due to preparation and implementation of the new code set, staff productivity will go down by 30-50%. To ensure accuracy in coding and claim submission, expert coders and billers will be required to sail through ICD-10 challenges.
Additionally billers and coders can be engaged in:
- Advising physicians on benefits of early training so that the impact on clinical and operational efficiency can be reduced
- Helping providers in elimination of potential problems in billing and coding process. This will help practices prevent negative impact to cash flow
- Skilled coders and billers can also help practices upgrade systems in accordance with latest billing and coding requirements
Coders and billers will also help practices consider financial aspects of ICD-10 transition. They will play a major role in helping physicians estimate cost outlays associated with system, technology, process modernization and training.
Medicalbillersandcoders.com com is the largest consortium of billers and coders in the US, helping practices sail through ICD-10 challenges. We constantly update our coders’ knowledge with ICD-10 transition techniques. MBC has a unique training program on ICD-10 transition that offers forums, online learning materials, webinars along with latest updates. We work with the aim to make the role of billers and coders simple and beneficial and help providers overcome challenges related to implementation and assessment of ICD-10 readiness. Our job portals, newsletters and industry updates also offer opportunities and knowledge to coders.
