More Medicare enrollees means less reimbursement funding to go around
According to Cindy Doyon of Precyse, a health information management technology company, the aging of the baby boomer generation is putting financial and operating pressure on hospitals and health care providers. Baby boomers are moving from private insurance to Medicare at a rate of over 5,000 per day. Doyon says that this fact alone will trigger a decrease in hospital reimbursement rates per unit of service. Reimbursements must decrease simply in order to break even.
With less reimbursement revenue per patient available, it becomes even more vital for health care providers to maintain the highest level of accuracy in coding activities. The impending transition to ICD 10 presents further challenges, as some studies have found that the process of mapping codes from ICD 9 to ICD 10 presents significant reimbursement risk exposure, with tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars potentially at stake depending on the size of the provider.
Fortunately, working with HCC Coders can help health plan providers maintain a strong bottom line in several important ways.
First of all, we can ensure the highest coding accuracy via our superior coding staff and coding software. All of our coders have been rigorously screened prior to being included in our network. They are also highly trained in ICD 9 and already prepared for the ICD 10 transition too. Some of our coders even have special areas of expertise where they are even more familiar with the relevant codes. Whether or not you choose to use our coders, you can always use our software, HCC Navigator, to streamline your code submission processes and improve coding accuracy. HCC Navigator enables health provider staff to send charts and documentation instantly to coders via a secure internet portal and audit and review the finished codes on a case by case basis.
Secondly, we can reduce your overhead by enabling you to outsource various processes to us. We can handle your complete coding activities from start to finish, saving you from employing your own coders directly. Or, we can simply source coders for you to hire as your own employees, which still saves you significant HR expenses associated with advertising, vetting, training, and hiring of coding staff. Either way we make it easy to scale your coding activities up or down to accommodate changing coding volumes.
Please contact HCC Coders today to learn more about how we can help you keep your reimbursement rates maximized even in this changing health care environment.