Defeating the coding monsters.
Accuracy in coding is rapidly becoming a required skill for military health care providers. Clinic staffing, equipment purchase decisions, and even reimbursement will soon be based on the coding data that we provide. Learning the complicated myriad of rules to code accurately can seem overwhelming. However, the majority of clinic visits in a typical outpatient clinic generally fall into two major evaluation and management codes, 99213 and 99214. If health care providers can learn the rules required to code a 99214 visit, then this will provide a 90% solution that can enable them to accurately code the majority of their clinic visits. This article demonstrates a step-by-step method to code a 99214 visit, by viewing each of the three requirements as a monster to be defeated.
Colt
Ross
R
Department of Family Medicine, Madigan Army Medical Center, Tacoma, WA 98403, USA.
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