Medical coding is that crucial part of healthcare services bridging the service of a practitioner and health insurance companies, easing the rest of the processes other than core healthcare provided.
The process of a medical coder starts with coding varied information of healthcare procedures. Information such as medical coding, diagnosis, treatment procedures, assessment, and other clinical procedures are coded by the medical coder. These are of use mainly in places including:
- Health insurance companies
- Government procedures
- Patients
Inpatient Vs outpatient coding
Medical coding can be widely classified into inpatient procedure and outpatient procedure. The difference between the two lies with varied elements starting from the very training given to the coder.
Deeper into outpatient medical coding:
Just the way the meaning of ‘outpatient’ goes, outpatient medical coding is the process of maintaining medical charts for patients who are discharged from the hospital within 24 hours. This mainly involves coding patient details and healthcare procedures at doctor’s clinic, offices or emergency rooms that usually end within a day.
Deeper into inpatient medical coding:
Contrary to what outpatient medical coding means, inpatient coding is for the coding done for patients who are admitted in the hospital. This is comparatively complex than outpatient coding, as this requires numerous procedures due to the administration of different medicines and practice of varied medical procedures including lab charges, nursing, special visit by expert practitioners, etc.
Training for these two types of medical coding varies accordingly too.