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Impact of Coding Curriculum on Dermatology Resident Billing
Background Competent medical coding is key to maintaining a successful dermatology practice. Resident billing performance can have significant financial implications for the academic institutions employing them. During their residency training, dermatology residents commonly find themselves responsi...
Autores principales: | , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Cureus
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9107352/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35582556 http://dx.doi.org/10.7759/cureus.24148 |
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author | Owji, Shayan Tassavor, Michael Han, Joseph Golant, Alexandra Svidzinski, Cula Ungar, Jonathan |
author_facet | Owji, Shayan Tassavor, Michael Han, Joseph Golant, Alexandra Svidzinski, Cula Ungar, Jonathan |
author_sort | Owji, Shayan |
collection | PubMed |
description | Background Competent medical coding is key to maintaining a successful dermatology practice. Resident billing performance can have significant financial implications for the academic institutions employing them. During their residency training, dermatology residents commonly find themselves responsible for the billing of patient encounters. However, despite the importance of adequate knowledge and skill in medical coding, recent data show inadequacies in this aspect of resident education. The goal of this study is to evaluate the impact of an interventional coding curriculum on dermatology residents’ billing accuracy at our institution. Methodology Billing data, including evaluation and management (E/M) level of service, procedural codes, and current procedural terminology modifiers (if applicable) were queried from the electronic medical records (EMR) at a resident clinic seeing patients on three half-days each week. Billing codes were gathered from patient visits occurring in two separate time periods, before and after the intervention. The intervention consisted of monthly resident lectures on E/M and procedural billing in outpatient dermatology with associated quizzes. Billing accuracy was verified by three attending dermatologists through chart review and compared between the two time periods. Results Overall, billing data from 532 patient visits, 267 from the pre-intervention period and 265 from the post-intervention period, were checked for accuracy. The accuracy of resident-billed E/M levels of service was similar between the pre- and post-intervention periods (44.3% vs. 44.8%). Similar rates of undercoding and overcoding were noted between the pre- and post-intervention periods (35.2% undercoded and 8% overcoded vs. 35.7% and 8.9%, respectively). However, substantial improvements were noted in the rate of errors with procedural codes and modifiers in the post-intervention period. Overall, 21.9% of procedural codes were incorrectly billed pre-intervention compared to 3.7% post-intervention (p < 0.05). Moreover, 55.2% of modifiers were incorrectly billed pre-intervention versus 27.3% post-intervention (p < 0.05). Conclusions Our analysis suggests that billing lectures yielded a clear improvement in resident billing accuracy at our institution. While there was no improvement in E/M coding, there was a significant improvement in the usage of procedural codes and modifiers. Similar analyses can be used by other residency programs to monitor resident billing performance and the efficacy of educational programs on medical billing. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9107352 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | Cureus |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-91073522022-05-16 Impact of Coding Curriculum on Dermatology Resident Billing Owji, Shayan Tassavor, Michael Han, Joseph Golant, Alexandra Svidzinski, Cula Ungar, Jonathan Cureus Dermatology Background Competent medical coding is key to maintaining a successful dermatology practice. Resident billing performance can have significant financial implications for the academic institutions employing them. During their residency training, dermatology residents commonly find themselves responsible for the billing of patient encounters. However, despite the importance of adequate knowledge and skill in medical coding, recent data show inadequacies in this aspect of resident education. The goal of this study is to evaluate the impact of an interventional coding curriculum on dermatology residents’ billing accuracy at our institution. Methodology Billing data, including evaluation and management (E/M) level of service, procedural codes, and current procedural terminology modifiers (if applicable) were queried from the electronic medical records (EMR) at a resident clinic seeing patients on three half-days each week. Billing codes were gathered from patient visits occurring in two separate time periods, before and after the intervention. The intervention consisted of monthly resident lectures on E/M and procedural billing in outpatient dermatology with associated quizzes. Billing accuracy was verified by three attending dermatologists through chart review and compared between the two time periods. Results Overall, billing data from 532 patient visits, 267 from the pre-intervention period and 265 from the post-intervention period, were checked for accuracy. The accuracy of resident-billed E/M levels of service was similar between the pre- and post-intervention periods (44.3% vs. 44.8%). Similar rates of undercoding and overcoding were noted between the pre- and post-intervention periods (35.2% undercoded and 8% overcoded vs. 35.7% and 8.9%, respectively). However, substantial improvements were noted in the rate of errors with procedural codes and modifiers in the post-intervention period. Overall, 21.9% of procedural codes were incorrectly billed pre-intervention compared to 3.7% post-intervention (p < 0.05). Moreover, 55.2% of modifiers were incorrectly billed pre-intervention versus 27.3% post-intervention (p < 0.05). Conclusions Our analysis suggests that billing lectures yielded a clear improvement in resident billing accuracy at our institution. While there was no improvement in E/M coding, there was a significant improvement in the usage of procedural codes and modifiers. Similar analyses can be used by other residency programs to monitor resident billing performance and the efficacy of educational programs on medical billing. Cureus 2022-04-14 /pmc/articles/PMC9107352/ /pubmed/35582556 http://dx.doi.org/10.7759/cureus.24148 Text en Copyright © 2022, Owji et al. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Dermatology Owji, Shayan Tassavor, Michael Han, Joseph Golant, Alexandra Svidzinski, Cula Ungar, Jonathan Impact of Coding Curriculum on Dermatology Resident Billing |
title | Impact of Coding Curriculum on Dermatology Resident Billing |
title_full | Impact of Coding Curriculum on Dermatology Resident Billing |
title_fullStr | Impact of Coding Curriculum on Dermatology Resident Billing |
title_full_unstemmed | Impact of Coding Curriculum on Dermatology Resident Billing |
title_short | Impact of Coding Curriculum on Dermatology Resident Billing |
title_sort | impact of coding curriculum on dermatology resident billing |
topic | Dermatology |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9107352/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35582556 http://dx.doi.org/10.7759/cureus.24148 |
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