ICD-10-medical-coding-system

What is the ICD-10 Medical Coding System?

Have you ever come across a medical bill? Have you noticed some weird medical coding being done in order to describe your patient’s condition and treatment? Well, these codes are of significant importance and are called ICD-10 codes.

What Are ICD-10 Codes?

ICD-10 is an abbreviation of the Tenth Revision of the International Classification of Diseases. It is a coding system that was globally introduced by the World Health Organization (WHO) to help healthcare workers and practitioners use suitable codes in order to classify a type of disease for billing purposes.

Types Of ICD-10 Codes

For most of the countries, the WHO has established an international version of ICD-10 codes. However, in the US, the international ICD-10 coding system is further divided into two major categories:

International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-10-CM)

ICD-10-CM codes are widely used in the US for coding almost all of diseases, health problems, diagnoses, and other types of sickness. They are usually called a ‘replacement’ for the international version (ICD-10)

International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision, Procedure Coding System (ICD-10-PCS)

ICD-10-PCS has a narrower scope of coverage which only covers the coding system that can be applied for inpatient procedures.

These ICD-10 code divisions were established by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the National Center of Health Statistics (NCHS) to further help practitioners identify and classify disease codes.

Types of ICD-10 Codes
In order to understand the vital importance of ICD-10 codes, it is important to know the fundamentals of why to even use the ICD-10 codes in the first place. What are its benefits and how using them can be a game-changer for future medication and treatment? Although there are tremendous advantages to using ICD-10 codes in your practice, some of the main advantages are:
Why we use ICD-10 Codes?

Why Use ICD-10 Codes?

In order to understand the vital importance of ICD-10 codes, it is important to know the fundamentals of why to even use the ICD-10 codes in the first place. What are its benefits and how using them can be a game-changer for future medication and treatment? Although there are tremendous advantages to using ICD-10 codes in your practice, some of the main advantages are:

Well-Structured data

ICD-10 codes can serve as an ‘organized library’ for diseases in which you can easily identify which type of code represents which type of disease. This helps practitioners to study and identify what types of diseases are most common, what types of diseases need further research, etc.

Better Classification

When you use the ICD-10 medical coding system, you know there is a specific system that helps you classify a disease. This prevents irregular and vague disease data entry which can lead to further confusion for both practitioners, patients, and payers.

Accurate Billing

There are approximately 72,000 codes in the ICD-10 medical coding system. In other words, a huge ton. So when you are describing your patient’s medical illness for billing purposes, most likely you’ll find the accurate code that will describe their conditions to the payers in the best way possible.

How To Use ICD-10 Codes?

Now that you know the ICD-10 codes’ benefits in your practice, the main concern is how to properly and accurately use these ICD-10 codes in your practice so that you can compile accurate billing and get maximum reimbursements. There are several ways to properly use the codes, here are a few:

ICD-10 Codes Guidebook

One of the best ways to access the ICD-10 codes for your practice is to have them in the form of a physical guidebook or access them online. When getting a hard copy of the codes, it’s better to get the updated version of the ICD-10 codes as newer codes get added to it each year.

And if you are more of an ‘online access only’ type of practitioner, you can always access the online version of the ICD-10 codes. The good news is that accessing ICD-10 codes online which is available online, is absolutely free. You don’t have to pay a penny to find the right healthcare coding to classify diseases.

Become a World-Class Medical Coding Expert

Now having access to the codes is not enough. You must know how to use accurate codes in your practice to avoid errors and claim denials. For most practitioners, it is a nightmare as finding one specific code for your patient’s disease from the list of 72,000 codes is no less than a headache.

But if you somehow manage your own billing, or have people in your practice who do this for you, make sure they know the codes in and out so they can accurately place the right code in front of the right disease.

Hire Medical Billing and Coding Experts

This is probably the best, most viable, and in the long-term, most profitable way to process medical billing in your practice. I’ll explain how.

When you hire an expert medical coding and billing company like MaxRemind, they’re equipped with a well-trained, professional, and highly accurate group of experts who can process your billing without a flinch.

With a 99% first-pass clean claims rate (and that’s a huge claim), you can drop your headache regarding billing your patient. All you need to do is focus on giving the best treatment to your patient and that’s all. All the other administrative work will be handled by the expert team of MaxRemind.

And if you think long-term, you can save a lot of money by getting accurate (and maximum) reimbursement all the time. Now imagine if you or your in-house people had to struggle with coding and billing, chances are you might face claim denials, delays, and loss of revenue. With MaxRemind, the loss is never an option.

And that’s not all, MaxRemind offers a lot more than just billing and coding. You can get definitive healthcare revenue cycle management, world-class EHR software (Maximus EHR), and much more.

Conclusion

It’s best to delegate your tasks to experts who know the ins and outs of medical technicalities. When it comes to ICD-10 coding, these tasks must be handled carefully to avoid complexities, delays, errors, and revenue loss. And that’s why it is best to let medical and billing experts like MaxRemind handle the technical tasks for you. And you do what you do best i.e. taking care and treating your patients with best practices.