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Georgia Northwestern Technical College’s Business Healthcare Technology Program not only enables graduates to address the statewide shortage of medical coders, but also provides data that impacts healthcare protocols and patient outcomes.
The American Academy of Professional Coders defines medical coding as the conversion of medical examinations, procedures, medical services, and devices into universal medical alphanumeric codes.
Her Gina Stephens, associate professor of business management technology, said: The US Bureau of Labor Statistics projects an annual demand for her more than 34,000 medical record and health information professionals over this decade.
Lisa Hunt, Program Director, Business Healthcare Technology, said: “Disease tracking allows us to detect and respond to outbreaks at an early stage, before they become epidemics or pandemics.”
WHO uses these codes to track incidents. If authorities detect more accidents in the area, they can investigate the causes of the accidents so that safety measures can be put in place, Hunt said.
The data can be used by organizations such as the Centers for Disease Control to work with her WHO on clean water, immunization protocols, disaster planning, patient education and care, prevention policies and other environmental issues, she said. she said.
Pharmaceutical companies also use medical codes to identify drug resistance and emerging pharmacological needs, and track patient outcomes to examine quality of care. Insurance companies use this data to adjust premiums, she said.
Many cutting-edge technologies and social viewpoints influence medical coding, Ms. Stephens said, adding that “artificial intelligence and social determinants of health are very interesting influences on medical coding.”
Basic medical coding can be done with artificial intelligence, but complex decisions and audits require a coding expert, Ms. Hunt said, adding “we are training our students to code using Encoders, which is the current industry trend.” The physician or facility “may be fined financially or face criminal penalties if the data on a patient’s chart does not match the medical diagnosis (International Classification of Diseases code) or a procedural code.”
the Office of the Inspector General, the Department of Health and Human Resources, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services all carry out federal oversight. The FBI estimates that healthcare fraud causes annual losses of tens of billions of dollars. facilities must also return millions of dollars every year due to fraud, abuse, and coding problems.