Coding Crunch: The Future of Medical Coding

Did anyone see the interesting article in For The Record magazine entitled, Coding Crunch: Who will feed the cash cow?

It talks about how recruiters and HIM professionals at healthcare facilities are having a hard time recruiting and retaining medical coding specialists at their facilities. Some are having to use outside-of-the-box techniques to lure medical coders to their facilities. More and more coding professionals are opting to work from home instead of fighting traffic and losing out on quality family time, and medical facilities are willing to offer this perk to keep their valued coders.

Surely, this conundrum also appeals to outsourced medical coding services who can deliver qualified medical coding specialists on or off-site to these facilities as well.

Challenges for the Medical Coding Vendor

There’s a lot of buzz these days going around about the growth of the medical coding industry, especially the concept of outsourcing what was once a predominantly in-house service. Of course with any change comes a certain amount of worries and questions.

Gone are the days when a health care facilitiy only calls on a medical coding vendor when they need to catch up on a back log. Health care facilities are now starting to use medical coding vendors to meet all of their coding demands.

As this trend continues to grow, and it will, the key for medical coding service owners is to minimize the perceived risk associated with outsourcing. The medical coding services who will succeed in the marketplace are those who understand how to stop the preception that outsourced work is less quality work. It’s a very different way of selling compared to traditional sales. We highly recommend the book Crossing the Chasm: How to Win Mainstream Markets for Technology Products by Geoffrey A. Moore as a good guideline for how to sell to physicians.

Take-aways from 2007 AHIMA Meeting

Philip Cohen (president of PRN Funding, LLC), traveled to Philadelphia, PA for the 2007 American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) Meeting earlier this month, and he wanted to share some of his general observations about this year’s conference for our medical coding blog readers.

 

Overall, Phil said that he was overwhelmed by the number of medical coding software vendors exhibiting at the show.  Much like the concept of outsourcing medical transcription has grown rapidly over the past decade, outsourced medical coding is well on its way.

 

It appears as a whole that HIM Directors are more willing to outsource a portion or all of their in-house medical coding.  However, perceived risk of using an outsourced medical coding vendor continues to remain a top worry for HIM professionals within a hospital setting.  Much like in the medical staffing industry or in the medical transcription industry, it will be up to the medical coding vendors to reduce the perceived risk.

 

Outsourcing medical coding is just one way that a medical facilitiy can cut in-house costs.  Given the current health care cash flow crunch, it will most likely take a long time for medical coding vendors to get paid by these facilities.  Therefore, it might be in their best interest to look into factoring their receivables with a funder who specializes in the medical coding industry.

 

Either way, medical coding is an industry is getting ready to explode.  PRN Funding will definitely be at the 2008 AHIMA Meeting in Seattle, Washington next year, ready and willing to learn about how we can help this growing industry become even better.

 

 

Medical Coding Services and HIPAA Compliance

In the temporary medical staffing industry, the necessity or non-necessity of becoming JCAHO compliant is a hot topic, which we have written about in the past in the Recruiting and Staffing Solutions Magazine: To Certify or Not to Certify. In fact, some healthcare staffing companies use their JCAHO compliance as a selling point when it comes to differentiating themselves from other medical staffing vendors.

Along the same competitive lines, we found a medical billing and coding blog who cautions healthcare providers to choose medical coding and medical billing vendors who are HIPAA compliant.

In their blog entry entitled, Worried about HIPAA Compliance when Outsourcing, the Outsource Management Group (a medical billing, medical coding, practice management and consulting firm located in Indiana) dishes out some advice that medical coding business owners might want to pay attention to when looking for prospective customers.

AAPC Announces 14 Medical Coding Specialty Certifications

In response to the growing demand in the medical profession for coders with individualized training in particular medical specialties, the American Academy of Professional Coders (AAPC) is expanding its certification offering to now include 14 specialty-specific credentials. These certifications complement AAPC’s core Certified Professional Coder (CPC™), Certified Professional Coder-Hospital (CPC-H™) and Certified Professional Coder-Payer (CPC-P™) certifications.

AAPC’s 14 specialty certifications include:

  • Ambulatory Surgical Center (CPC–ASC)
  • Anesthesia (CPC-ANEST)
  • Cardiology (CPC-CARDIO)
  • Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery (CPC-CTS)
  • E/M Auditor (CPC-E/M)
  • Family Practice Medicine (CPC-FP)
  • Gastroenterology (CPC-GI)
  • General Surgery (CPC-GENSG)
  • Internal Medicine (CPC-INTMED)
  • Obstetrics/Gynecology (CPC-OBGYN)
  • Orthopedics (CPC-ORTHO)
  • Otolaryngology (CPC-ENT)
  • Pediatrics (CPC-PEDS)
  • Plastics and Reconstructive Surgery (CPC-PLRS)

AAPC’s specialty certifications are available for those individuals who already hold CPC, CPC-H, CPC-P, CCS, or CCS-P designations and wish to demonstrate superior levels of expertise in selected disciplines of medical coding.

Click here to read the entire press release: AAPC Announces 14 Medical Coding Specialty Certifications
Specialty credentials ensure higher standard of coding

AAPC Announces Results Of 2007 Salary Survey

Just announced in the BC Advantage e-newsletter, the American Academy of Professional Coders (AAPC) released information collected from their 2007 Salaray Survey. Please read below for some highlights of the survey’s findings.

Certified coders earn an average of 17 percent more than their non-certified counterparts, according to the 2007 salary survey by the American Academy of Professional Coders, the nation’s largest education and credentialing organization for medical coders.

Other highlights from the survey include:

  • Administrators and consultants brought in the most money, both averaging more than $85,000 a year.
  • Coding professionals with master’s degrees took a huge leap this year, earning more than $85,000 a year – last year’s survey showed those with master’s degrees earned an average of $55,000 annually.
  • Coders with bachelor’s degrees earned between $40,000 – $45,000; coders with some college earned $30,000 – $35,000 a year.
  • Eight percent of coders with specialty credentials earned more than $85,000 annually.
  • Location, location, location: coders in urban settings earned more than those in rural or suburban areas.

“Each year, our salary survey shows a consistent difference between certified and non-certified coder salaries,” said Sheri Poe Bernard, CPC, CPC-H, CPC-P, vice president of member relations at AAPC. “At AAPC, we are constantly working to help more coding professionals get certified and into higher paying jobs. We are also increasing the value of credentials daily, making our certified coders more competitive in the industry.”

  • This year, 5,155 certified and non-certified coders participated in the salary survey. To view the full results and a break down of average salary by title, look in this month’s issue of Coding Edge magazine or visit AAPC’s Web site.

AAPC Announces Two Conferences for 2008

The August 8 edition of the BC Advantage e-newsletter reported that The American Academy of Professional Coders (AAPC) will host its 16th Annual Conference in two locations next year, one in Anaheim, CA and the other in Orlando, FL to accommodate the demand from its members and medical professionals nationwide.

 

Although both conferences are sure to pull a lot of attendees, PRN Funding will exhibit at the 2008 AAPC Orlando event.

 

Click here to read the entire press release: AAPC Hosts 16th Annual National Conference in Anaheim and Orlando in 2008.

 

Q: Will you be attending one of the AAPC meetings in 2008?

AAPC Announces first ever Chapter Association Board of Directors

Earlier this month, the Board of Directors for the first ever American Academy of Professional Coders Chapter Association (AAPCCA) was named. Independent of the American Academy of Professional Coders (AAPC), the AAPCCA Board of Directors was established to work in tandem with AAPC local chapter leaders to support strategic initiatives and programs. The AAPCCA and the local chapters form the non-profit arm of the AAPC.

Led by Chair Georgette Gutsin, CPC, CCS-P, CHC, the board is made up of 16 AAPC members from across the nation and one AAPC national office representative. The board members will serve for two years.

Click here to learn more about the 2007-2009 AAPCCA Board of Directors.

Newer Posts