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Important Information On Hospital Coding

By Sherry Gross


For purposes of uniformity and easy referencing, internationally developed standards of recording diseases and other health phenomena has been developed.An example of such standards is hospital coding.It refers to the process by which descriptions of medical diagnostics and procedures are transformed to code numbers that are universally acknowledged.

Diagnosis codes track diseases and related health concerns including chronic ailments like diabetes melitus and cardiac diseases, and ailments which spread easily such as norvirus, athlete foot and the flu. The procedural codes are applied in public health programs, private insurance companies and others sectors including workers compensation carriers.

These medical classification numbers and codes are used in all areas of medicine, public health sectors as well as medical informatics. These include therapeutic reactions, statistical analysis of ailments, reimbursement in diagnosis groups and oversight on epidemics and pandemic impacts.There are two main classes in coding systems, these are country specific standards and international standards.

In the statistical system, similar clinical concepts are grouped together into categories. The categories are limited to maintain a small size altogether. Some of these are those used by International statistical classification for diseases and related problems of health. For instance, international statistics place circulatory system diseases as chapter 1, with codes from 100 to 199. One of the code titles under this class is supra-ventricular tachycardia under which we also have some clinical concepts like the proxysmal junction tachycardia, nodal tachycardia and auricular tachycardia, among others. Another distinguishing feature of statistical classification is seen in the provision for unspecified and extra conditions that may not be placed in any particular category.

In a nomenclature system, there exists separate lists and codes for every clinical concept in health. Considering the previous example, each of the listed tachycardia bears its own code. Thus, in this respect, nomenclature is regarded as ineffective in compiling health statistics.

These Coding systems that define concepts in healthcare are of various types. Diagnosis codes are used to determine a disease and its symptoms and they can also be used to measure morbidity and mortality amongst given patient groups. Procedural codes are numbers and alphanumeric codes used in identifying health interventions to be executed by medical professionals.

World Health Organization has set several universally endorsed classification structures to facilitate surveillance on health related data among populations and also to compile national data that is consistent. This family, in international classification, includes the three major classification groupings on the basis of health parameters prepared by world health organization and approved by World Health Assembly.

Healthcare coding is growing rampantly in the health industry and the demand for coders is very high. In most countries, this job is plentiful and the salaries mostly start at $30000 a year. Anyone considering to join a career in this particular healthcare line must have the two main basics of the field, education and certification. In addition, aspirants competence and preciseness are two qualities that would give one an upper hand in the job

An upcoming trend is outsourcing coding tasks to third parties. As technology evolves day by day, coding platforms will emerge and the outsourcing model will become more established in the industry.




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