How to Maintain Medical Coders Productivity?

Do you feel like your medical practice is not generating the revenue it should? It might be due to inaccurate coding. The more efficiently your medical coders work, the higher your productivity statistics will be. Inaccurate coding is a big reason for payment delays, partial reimbursements and denied claims.

It takes additional time and effort for your practice to determine and rectify the errors before it can be resubmitted for approval. In some cases, incorrect coding can also lead your practice to legal repercussions like investigations, fraud or abuse cases, or audits. All of this can impact your image negatively. A lot of times these errors are made by new medical coders.

However, below are some tips for maintaining productivity with new medical coders.

Maintaining Productivity with New Medical Coders

Set Productivity Benchmarks

It is important for new employees to establish benchmarks for medical coding productivity during the recruitment process. Explain to them about the coding system you use, such as CPT, HCPCS Level II, ICD-10-CM. You must emphasize on accuracy rather than speed because it takes additional time to figure out the errors and rectify them.

Organize and Prioritize Tasks

Command your coders to prioritize the most pressing coding tasks. Handling time-consuming coding tasks in the beginning of the day is a good practice to maintain efficiency and accuracy. This is the best time as the employees are fresh and function with maximum efficiency.

Use Checklists and Template

Create a special checklist for the coding team that explains each step of your coding tasks. This prevents the coders from missing important steps in the process of maintaining consistency in data management. Creating templates for the most common diagnoses and procedures in your office is a great way to simplify the tasks. This saves time by entering the same data repeatedly.

Collect and Analyze Productivity Data

Establishing performance goals boosts coders accountability. It will also help you gain insight into the daily productivity of your employees. If all your team members are unable to fulfill the requirements, you must review their current workload and try to adjust your demands.

Decrease Distractions for Maximum Focus

You cannot oversee the importance of minimizing distractions such as using the radios, TVs, Phones, and tablets during coding. This is important because even a tiny error can lead to a significant loss in your revenue. Convey your expectations with telecommuters and help them stay efficient.

Outsource Your Process to Professionals

Medical billing and coding are a hectic process, and we cannot expect healthcare professionals to be in sync with all the coding and billing guidelines. If you have high footfall, having a team that handles the billing and coding tasks for you can be very helpful. However, it requires a dedicated infrastructure and team which will need huge finances.

Undre such circumstances, partnering with medical billing professionals is a great way to handle your claims. If you do not want to partner with any service provider, you can always go for software solutions like Unify Medicraft.

Unify Medicraft can easily integrate with your current process and help you simplify the coding and billing process. It will take the load of documentation and compliance from your shoulders so you can have time to focus on patient care.