Outlook and Future for Medical Coders

The simple days where a family practice secretary typed out a few invoices after office hours are history! Employers are tired of outdated coding and billing that causes nothing but headaches and frustration. Even the smallest offices need computer billing and claims processing, which makes the outlook for medical coding and billing staff excellent.

Doctors Will ALWAYS Need Medical Coders

There currently are over 819,000 physicians and surgeons, 2.4 million registered nurses, 77,000 occupational therapists, 182,000 physical therapists, 94,000 respiratory therapists and thousands of other allied health professionals in America's hospitals in need of medical coding and medical billers.

Health care was the largest industry in 2004. It provided 13.5 million jobs-13.1 million jobs for wage and salary workers and about 411,000 jobs for the self-employed. Doctors hire medical coders to ensure doctor visits are being coded to the appropriate levels and properly processed for health insurance/Medicare reimbursement. Accuracy, speed, and attention to detail are the medical coders' mark of excellence. Even IF, and that is a big if, everything were to go fully automated, machines and computers can't run themselves. There will always be jobs for people to maintain and run them.

A Promising Future for Medical Coding

The U.S. Department of Labor states that there will be continued employment opportunities for medical coding and billing specialists. A contributing factor are the ever increasing medical needs of an aging population and the growing number of licensed medical and health care practitioners who need to outsource their coding and billing workload. Today's medical coders are expected to "kick-out" large volumes of claims in record time. Medical offices, hospitals and clinics expect accuracy and methods that save time. Doctors hire medical coders to...

• add credibility to their practice
• achieve better cash flow
• avoid financial struggles
• keep their facility in compliance with laws and regulations

Employers are looking for someone with experience, positive attitude, and excellent work ethics.

Future Proofing

Future proofing electronic data involves the selection of physical media and data formats which are most likely to ensure the continued accessibility of the original information. Future proofing data storage means ensuring that a document or data will be able to be accessed and read in the future. Using open and well-documented formats, standards and specifications while avoiding closed proprietary formats lessens the risk of data becoming obsolete.

Once all doctors and hospitals have converted their patient's medical records to Electronic Health Records (EHR) the demand for medical coders, billers, and health information managers (HIM) will instantly increase even more, probably double, or triple.