What Effect Will Dual Coding Have On Medical Coding Productivity?

We have nine months left to get our healthcare organizations ready for ICD-10 coding. There are going to be a lot of decisions made.

Dual coding needs to be on the list. This is when healthcare organizations assign ICD-10 and ICD-9 codes simultaneously to medical records. This helps:

Test internal systems.
Identify opportunities for clinical documentation improvement (CDI) and areas where physicians need training.
Give medical coders practice with the ICD-10 codes. By coding constantly with ICD-10 codes, medical coders will keep their knowledge fresh.
Create data that can help healthcare providers renegotiate payer contracts. Healthcare providers can compare data and make sure that reimbursements won’t change Oct. 1
Participate in external testing with healthcare payers and clearinghouses.

This won’t be cheap. Systems need to be designed for dual coding. And no matter what your vendor promises, dual coding is extra work. That means there will be a productivity loss. Maybe computer assisted coding (CAC) will help.

It’s very likely that you will need to assign extra coding resources. For example, let’s guess that dual coding will mean a 50 percent drop in productivity. If your medical coders process four medical claims, then they will only be able to process 2 under dual coding. To keep the number of claims consistent (and preserve cash flow), staff needs to be scheduled to process those two lost claims.

Extra medical coders can be hired to cover the dual coders. Healthcare providers need to do a cost-benefit analysis to determine if it’s better to hire personnel or accept longer reimbursement cycles.

Accuracy also needs to be considered. How do medical coders know they have assigned the proper ICD-10 codes? Despite training and software tools, there is a chance that the wrong ICD-10 codes will be assigned.

There are checks to make sure the proper ICD-10 codes are used. But these require more productivity to be sacrificed to ensure accuracy.

But this loss of productivity is going to come sooner or later. There is a chance that dedicating staff to practicing ICD-10 coding and reviewing results now will mean better medical coding after Oct. 1. That would also mean fewer problems at a time when healthcare providers are having similar problems and demanding time from healthcare payers and clearinghouses to fix said problems.

Sooner or later, medical coding will take a hit. Doing it now through dual coding becomes an investment.

Originally published on: HealthcareITNews.com