Everyone has been buzzing over the Affordable Care Act, dubbed “Obamacare”, since its inception. Insurers, the insured and politicians alike have all speculated how this healthcare reform will affect them, the economy, doctors and health care in general. But an entity we’ve heard little from are the medical coding companies. How are all these changes going to affect the way we run our companies?

Medical Coding Changes?

Well, nothing will change with the medical coding process itself. Medical coders will still have to follow ICD-9, ICD-10 (coming soon) and CPT coding procedure. However, one thing that will most certainly change is the volume of medical coding. It stands to reason that if there are potentially 32 million more Americans being covered by individual health care insurance or national health care insurance, there will be an increase of medical coding for billing purposes.

Overall, the changes introduced by health care reform legislation will result in significantly more insured patients which will benefit the revenue of physicians – especially primary care doctors – family, internal, pediatrician, and geriatric providers.

Physicians and healthcare facilities will need more reliable, efficient and effective medical coding companies to process the influx of healthcare records that will need to be accurately coded. The health care providers will need to either hire medical coders or they are going to need to outsource their medical records coding.

With that said, one can be assured that healthcare IT staffing will be huge. Combine the requirements for healthcare facilities to transition to electronic health records and comply with a new medical coding system (ICD-10) with millions of newly insured patients and you have a recipe for lots of jobs to fill, and lots of medical coding to be processed.

The International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10) will include a staggering 69,000 diagnostic codes that physicians will be required to submit claims with the new codes starting Oct. 1, 2014 .As a health care provider or healthcare facility you are going to need a medical coding company that is prepared for this kind of change. A company that will have these codes already built into the electronic health records software.

PDN is a state of the art medical coding company. We are already getting ready for the coming changes within our sector. We will be ready to embrace the challenges and move your practice or facility into the new era of healthcare reform.