What Is a Medical Coding Service?

When a patient visits a medical facility, the doctor will take notes about his condition and a bill is created based on this documentation. The patient's insurance company may be billed or he may personally be billed. The process that involves inputting the numerical codes used for medical billing is referred to as medical coding. Instead of performing this work themselves, medical providers can outsource it to medical coding services.

What is Medical Coding?

• Medical coding is a discipline that involves translating medical notes into a code of numbers and letters. This is the initial step in the process of billing for a medical facility of any kind. Before the patient or the insurance company can accurately be billed, the notes have to be translated into a medical code. At that point, the proper price can be attached to the bill and then sent to the appropriate place to be paid.

Medical Coding Service

• A medical coding service is a company that engages in coding for various medical facilities. While some hospitals and other medical facilities employ medical coders on site, others outsource this work to a medical coding service. This type of service typically employs a number of medical coders and can handle many different types of medical billing procedures. The codes for all medical procedures are the same from one facility to the next and a medical coding service can offer this expertise.

Benefits

• The major benefit of using a medical coding service is that the medical facility can save money. Instead of having to employ a full-time staff of medical coders, the medical facility can simply send its bills to a medical coding service. This enables the medical facility to save money on salaries and benefits. Medical facilities can often send a large number of bills and notes that need to be properly coded, and larger medical coding services can handle the work load.

Other Functions

• Besides simply helping figure out the billing for a medical facility, medical coding services can also provide other benefits. The medical coding system was created to help easily track the conditions that are treated as well as the reasons a patient sought out care in the first place. By coding each and every case that comes through medical facility,it can help doctors gain more information about diseases and conditions. This is useful when calculating statistics, and this information can be used by insurance companies and other medical organizations.