Monday 30 June 2014

Important Information On Hospital Coding

By Sherry Gross


All professions in the health care sector function within stipulated standards of health analysis.In appreciation of the need for uniformity, hospital coding was designed by international health organizations such as WHO. Medical coding refers to the way medical diagnostics, clinical procedures and health related matters are converted into commonly recognized code numbers by all countries.

These codes are used to track ailments and related health issues which include chronic diseases such as diabetes mellitus and heart diseases, contagious diseases like norovirus, flu and athletes foot. These procedures are useful to the development of public health programs, private insurance company policy development and in workers compensation carrier.

These medical classification numbers and codes are used in all areas of medicine, public health sectors as well as medical informatics. These include therapeutic reactions, statistical analysis of ailments, reimbursement in diagnosis groups and oversight on epidemics and pandemic impacts.There are two main classes in coding systems, these are country specific standards and international standards.

The statistical classification system puts similar clinical concerns into specific categories. This coding is limited in order to a small size in order to prompt easy and quick mastery. Statistical methods are used in international statistical grouping of diseases and general health concerns. For instance, circulatory diseases are all placed in chapter ix and are coded as 100 to 199.There are precise categories such as supra-ventricular tachycardia under which we also have concepts such as auricular tachycardia, nodal tachycardia and proximal junction tachycardia. Another distinguishing feature is seen in the provision of unspecified conditions that are absent in any particular category. A special feature of the statistical method is that it contains provision of residual categories for other unspecified conditions.

In a nomenclature system, there exists separate lists and codes for every clinical concept in health. Considering the previous example, each of the listed tachycardia bears its own code. Thus, in this respect, nomenclature is regarded as ineffective in compiling health statistics.

These Coding systems that define concepts in healthcare are of various types. Diagnosis codes are used to determine a disease and its symptoms and they can also be used to measure morbidity and mortality amongst given patient groups. Procedural codes are numbers and alphanumeric codes used in identifying health interventions to be executed by medical professionals.

The world health organization gives several globally adopted classification designs to provide surveillance on health data for the population with regard to time and compiling national data in a consistent manner.

The healthcare classification jobs are growing very fast and more coders and health analyst are demanded each day. In many countries, these jobs are in abundance and the salary ranges at $30000 per annum . Any party intending to practise in this area must have the main requirements, education and certification for training. Candidates who exhibit good precision and competence in the job will always have an upper hand in searching for employment as employers are keen on these particlar qualities when recruiting additional staff members.

An upcoming trend in this job is outsourcing coding work to third parties. With the evolution of technology, coding platforms will gradually increase and outsourcing will become more embraced in the industry.




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