Up to 80% of medical bills contain errors.
(Becker's Hospital Review)
Inaccurate medical coding can impede your revenue cycle significantly. Experian Health’s 2022 “The State of Claims” survey report found that approximately 1 out of 3 practices experience claim denials 10-15% of the time. This results in a 10% loss of revenue every day.
Understandably, the heavy stake in medical billing makes therapists want to focus a lot of their time on ensuring the accuracy of their coding. This, however, comes at the compromise of patient engagement.
In a 2022 report, TechTarget revealed that 61% of patients want to hear more from their therapists. But when a therapist focuses more on taking notes than listening to their patient, the patient feels unaccommodated, resulting in dissatisfaction or attrition.
To streamline your medical coding workflow, save time, and directly engage your patients more, here are techniques and trends you should try:
Efficient Techniques And Trends In Medical Billing And Coding
Mastering Shorthand And Other Data Capture Methods
- Integrate shorthand to take note of applicable ICD-10 codes.
- Dictate notes after the appointment for more complete insights.
- Space out your scheduling for a manageable workload.
Writing techniques such as shorthand allow you to write clinical notes quicker during the patient appointment. Ideally, you’ll take note of which ICD-10 procedure codes may apply to the patient’s case.
On top of shorthand, you can dictate notes after the appointment to have a clearer picture of the patient’s situation. This helps later on to have complete, accurate documentation.
Whichever methods you choose to apply, one sustainable approach you can try is to space out your scheduling. Keep a gap that lasts anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes between each appointment. This gives you ample time to clear your mind and rest, allowing you to be more focused as you write notes and do coding later on.
Pre-set Documentation Templates
- Simplify medical coding workflow by using templates based on treatment.
- Work with your therapist team to produce intuitive pre-set documentation templates.
- Review templates regularly and update them based on documentation payor requirements.
Documentation templates can streamline your medical coding workflow substantially. Instead of starting from scratch with every patient, you can use a specific pre-set documentation template that matches the patient’s case closely.
This works best if you start by collaborating with the other therapists in your practice to produce the templates. Besides alleviating the workload of creating the templates, this also ensures that communication is seamless across therapists in case the patient goes to another therapist.
More importantly, your team should review and update these templates based on payor requirements. That way, you can speed up your team’s documentation workflow substantially.
Assign Administrative Staff With Medical Coding
- Train administrative staff on medical coding.
- Coordinate with them regularly for seamless communication.
- Stay focused on patient care.
Instead of taking on medical coding yourself, assign it to your administrative staff. With regular training, they can assume the role of coding and allow you to focus entirely on patient care.
To make this effective long-term, coordinate with your administrative staff regularly to ensure your workflow is efficient and communication is seamless. Provide them access to the latest updates on documentation payor requirements and other guidelines so they can always be well-equipped to code your documentation accurately.
Using Scribe AI Tools
- Record the patient encounter, generate SOAP notes automatically, and transfer them to your EMR with one click.
- Must be compatible with any EMR
- Should include dedicated support from developers
No matter how you put it, medical record documentation takes a substantial amount of time and energy. Mistakes such as overcoding can occur due to the daily grind of balancing patient care and documentation.
With an AI scribe tool like ScribePT, managing that balance becomes significantly easier. You can record the patient encounter, automatically generate SOAP notes that match your documentation style, and transfer the notes to your EMR with one click. This can free up a lot of your time to focus on directly engaging with your patients.
For best results, choose an AI scribe that can be compatible with any existing EMR and receives dedicated support from developers to ensure that it matches your needs.
Read this blog to learn more about how AI benefits the patient documentation process!
Accelerate Your Medical Coding Workflow With AI
Learning what medical coding is and its impact on your practice is vital to successful patient documentation and patient care. With these techniques and trends, you can streamline your documenting workflow significantly and give the attention your patients deserve.
Writing SOAP notes for physical therapy is a breeze with ScribePT, the best AI scribe for medical documentation. ScribePT lets you record the patient encounter, generate accurate SOAP notes that match your documentation style automatically and transfer them to your EMR in one click, allowing you to reclaim up to 40 hours of your time per month.sier.
