Medical Coding Professional

Delivering quality healthcare depends on capturing accurate and timely medical data. Medical coding professionals fulfill this need as key players in the healthcare workplace.
Health information coding is the transformation of verbal descriptions of diseases, injuries, and procedures into numeric or alphanumeric designations. Originally, medical coding was performed to classify mortality (cause of death) data on death certificates. However, coding is also used to classify morbidity and procedural data. The coding of health-related data permits access to medical records by diagnoses and procedures for use in clinical care, research, and education.
Since the implementation of the federal government's first prospective payment system in 1983, there has been a great deal more emphasis placed on medical coding. Currently, reimbursement of hospital and physician claims for Medicare patients depends entirely on the assignment of codes to describe diagnoses, services, and procedures provided. In the 1990s the federal government attacked the problem of healthcare fraud and abuse. As the basis for reimbursement, appropriate medical coding has become crucial as healthcare providers seek to assure compliance with official coding guidelines.
There are many demands for accurately coded data from the medical record. In addition to their use on claims for reimbursement, codes are included on data sets used to evaluate the processes and outcomes of healthcare. Coded data are also used internally by institutions for quality management activities, case-mix management, planning, marketing and other administrative and research activities