Social Distancing Protocols

As the novel coronavirus cases spikes, transitioning to work from home became a necessity, albeit challenging since staff of a medical billing and coding company work in close liaison with the staff at the medical facility to obtain accurate information, discrepancy in which could lead to claim denials. Telehealth has been on the rise to keep the business operational in the wake of the pandemic.

New Virus - New Code

Coding had to be done for novel coronavirus, something that had not been done before. When World Health Organization created the emergency code International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-10-CM) in March, it was followed until changes in codes for the virus and related conditions and procedures were introduced. On top of that, policy and regulation changes have grown frequent, therefore, in order to remain on top of things the medical billers and coders need to be well-informed about these changes.

Vigorous Education and Training

Vigorous education and urgent training has been one of the greatest tools to overcome the hurdles thrown by the pandemic. Since remote clinical services are on the rise as a precaution against COVID-19, coding educators have formed a grid which includes information about the methods of communications with the patients. Using these resources to collect information in a timely and organized manner has helped medical billers and coders during these arduous times.

Role of Technology

Technology has been a vital component of the medical billing and coding process for a long time. With a pandemic on the horizon, the existent technology had to go under major revamp to accommodate the rapidly changing codes, policies, procedures and services. Since the transition to work from home came in effect, all the manual procedures had to be automated for the revenue cycle to work. Most healthcare organizations are implementing telehealth. Some have had the telehealth option integrated within their solution to facilitate off-site patient check-in, monitoring of denials, computer assisted coding to achieve accuracy and automation in documentation processes etc. in order to reduce manual work needed to be done on the backend. Use of cloud-based services to cater to the medical workforce functioning on a remote basis is increasing as well.

Historic Changes in E/M Codes

Since 1st January 2021, historic changes in evaluation and management have come into effect which decrease the administrative load of coding, unnecessary documentation as well as need for audits in addition to ensuring payment for E/M is resource-based with no direct goal for payment redistributions between specialties.

New guidelines for the American Medical Association (AMA), now allow physicians to select an E/M code based on total time spent on the date of the encounter or medical decision-making so that physicians will no longer have to rely on a patient’s history or physical exam to determine the appropriate level of E/M coding.

CMS also decided to finalize changes to Medicare Physician Fee Schedule in 2021 to align with the AMA’s guidance, resulting in the greatest change to E/M coding in three decades.

With the physicians’ hands full looking after the patients during the pandemic it is not easy to keep up with the constantly changing and emerging CPT codes and payer policies. Therefore, in order to keep your revenue cycle steady, it is the need of the hour to invest in outsourcing the medical billing and coding work to companies such as Avernus Medical Billing, to keep your focus on treating the patients and overcoming the pandemic.

Call us at at +1 817-989-6949 or send us a mail at info@avernuscorp.com where our staff would be eager to assist you in the times of COVID-19 riddled with new challenges in medical billing and coding industry.