
Medical coding or medical classification is the transformation of healthcare diagnoses, procedures, medical services, and equipment into universally accepted alphanumeric codes, which are assigned from a code set i.e., ICD-9 CM, the International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification, which is most widely recognized medical classification maintained by the World Health Organization (WHO), the primary purpose being to categorize the diseases for morbidity and mortality reporting following certain rules of underlying classification and other coding guidelines.
The diagnoses and procedure codes are taken from medical records, such as transcribed notes of physicians, laboratory reports, and radiological findings, etc. Medical coding professionals ensure that the codes given are correct during the process of coding, which includes abstracting the information from the documentation, assigning standard codes for clinical statements using CPT, ICD-9-CM, and HCPCS Level II classification systems, and creating a claim to be paid by insurance carriers.
Coding is an invisible engine of the healthcare system. Without it, the entire healthcare industry would be unable to efficiently transmit important data, and healthcare providers would have an incredibly hard time getting paid for their services. In a nutshell, it is the medical coder’s job to translate the healthcare provider’s report of a patient encounter into numeric or alphanumeric code, which in turn is used by the medical biller to make a bill, or “claim,” for the insurance company and determine the appropriate charge for the patient.
Here where comes the pi-safe™ into picture, which provides a complete database of codes and reference library empowering the end users to make the right decisions. The transcribed reports, which are electronically searchable, enable pi-safe™ to recognize all the required procedures and diagnoses from the report and prompt the coder with the appropriate codes instantly, and make the process of reviewing much faster.
pi-safe™ being the product of pi international global solutions®, which in turn has a core and dedicated team of medical coders in-house who are certified by AHIMA (American Health Information Management Association) and AAPC (American Academy of Professional Coders) who offers state-of-the-art diagnostic and procedural coding across major medical specialties.
pi-safe™ performs Quality control (QC) checks to ensure that the performed service adheres to a defined set of quality criteria or meets the requirements of the client or customer, and also Quality assurance (QA) checks to ensure whether the quality during the process (from the beginning to the end of coding process) meets the specified requirements and also to calculate the percentage of errors at each level of data entry. If too many instances of errors or deviations occur in the quality then corrective action will be taken by giving training and educating the coders to improve the production and service process. Finally, the QC and QA process is maintained to ensure that remedial efforts have produced satisfactory results and to detect any recurrences or new instances of trouble.