If your coding department is establishing inefficiencies, interacting with coding-related backlogs, and/or surviving.
On a small budget and a small staff, there is a negative effect on your organization’s bottom line.
Medical coding services have an expanding impact on revenue cycle performance, so improving your coders’ working atmosphere.
Finding the relevant issues for training, and trying to maximize the technology.
Available can all have a positive impact on the total cash collected at the end of the day, week, month, or year.
Spend some time examining your coding department.
Whether you are a one-person show or a large multi-specialty team. These six coding operation tips will improve your revenue cycle performance.
Stop interfering
It takes an average of 23 minutes for a team member who has been interrupted to refocus on a task.
Turning off email alerts, reducing unnecessary meetings, and scheduling time to focus on.
Important projects can help to reduce distractions and increase productivity among your coders.
Please don’t put coders in the same room as the staff refrigerator.
Keep non-coding tasks to a minimum for your coders
Are any of your coders responsible for front-end business tasks such as appointment scheduling or patient check-in? Limit non-coding tasks for your coders so that they can concentrate on what they do best: code.
There are numerous advantages to conducting a thorough review of work assignments to determine.
Whether non-coding tasks should be assigned to non-coding personnel.
It is important to note that coders are sometimes best suited to additional tasks.
For example, if you have highly compassionate coders who have a talent for translating difficult.
Medical terminology in layman’s terms could be ideal for answering coding-related questions for your patients.
Learn how to use the EMR correctly
Team members are often minimally trained and never learn the ‘bells and whistles that can make processing information infinitely easier.
Train within your EMR across all roles (provider, clinical support staff, front desk.
Revenue cycle specialists, and coders) to avoid mistakes.
It’s really just to ensure that “the left arm knows what the right arm is doing
Use verifications to enhance coding accuracy
A coding compliance check can put quality issues front and center so that they can be addressed in a timely manner.
When performed with the right intention, style, and frequency.
Medical coding checks actually improve coding accuracy when feedback is shared with providers and coders.
And here’s a tip in a tip: don’t let your coders think for an instant that an audit is a negative (or worse, punitive) practice.
When you audit coders with the goal of continuous professional growth, the positive results impact both directions of the revenue cycle.
Find out how co-sourcing helps with coding operations.
To use the clearest language, when you code jointly, you get highly skilled remote medical coders who work directly in your EMR.
If you stuck to that last line, rest assured that a few key signatures on a Commercial Partner Contract (BAA) approved by the Legal Department are precisely the protection you need.
Co-sourcing with a coding partner to complete your current team offers flexibility that is otherwise hard to reach.
You are instantly and ideally equipped with the right medical coders for the volume and type of work that passes through your door at all times.
Monitor the progress of healthcare.
Updates occur each year in the CPT, the Common Health Procedures Coding System (HCPCS), and ICD-10.
It is important for your coders to be informed and educated about all encoding updates.
But now more than ever it is imperative that they understand.
The impact of value-based care and the new reporting guidelines on the cost of care to patients. The impact of value-based care and the new reporting guidelines on the cost of care to patients.
This has been around for a while, but it has gained traction since Medicare Advantage Plans began requiring risk adjustment factor (RAF) scores for reimbursement.
Conclusion
The suggestions above are meant to serve as a starting point for optimizing your coding department and ensuring you’re ready for today’s many challenges as well as the changes to come in the healthcare industry — all with an eye toward revenue cycle management performance.
