Medical coders and billers review medical documentation from providers' SOAP Notes to electronic medical records, usually on a medical computer. They assign codes on anything relevant to aid in record-keeping and payment. The essential and often thankless job is complex and ever-growing, and many coders and billers are turning to artificial intelligence to manage the process.
What is Medical Coding and Billing?
Both medical coding and billing involve assigning codes to healthcare documents like EMRs and insurance invoices. Though often grouped together, they're two specialties, with medical coders assigning the codes for medical procedures and items like disease names, medical conditions, and even instruments used.
Medical billers, as their name implies, focus on the billing part. They often review the medical coders' work to assign billing claims for the medical insurance companies. They investigate all-too-often denials from those companies as well as contact patients for payment on anything not covered by their insurance.
Medical coders and billers play critical roles in the healthcare industry, ensuring healthcare groups and medical facilities continue to get paid for their services while the payers are charged with the correct billables.
What is Artificial Intelligence?
Artificial intelligence (AI) aims to duplicate into a computer how human beings think: how we obtain information, process it, and, finally, commit it to memory. Depending on whom you ask, AI is broken down into categories like artificial narrow intelligence and general intelligence, as well as subsets like machine learning, deep learning, and neural pathways.
Two subsets of AI are of particular significance in medical coding and billing:
- Machine learning (ML) trains software to process data and make decisions like a human being.
- Natural Language Processing or Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) is a subset of ML. NLP aims to understand human language and respond in conversational speech like a human being.
How AI is changing Medical Coding and Billing
Medical coding and billing have grown along with the expanding healthcare industry. This has led to many challenges and concerns for coders:
- Constant updates: New medical knowledge and billing procedures mean learning new codes.
- Human error: Coders may apply the wrong code to a record due to fatigue, oversight, or misinterpretation.
- Inconsistency: Coders may apply different codes to the same record due to variations of that code.
- Increased complexity: Finding the correct code among tens of thousands can be daunting.
- Time-intensive: Reviewing records and code assignments is a time-consuming process.
To meet the above challenges, coders are turning to artificial intelligence. AI computers can review, organize, and process massive amounts of data faster and more efficiently than human beings. Aid from AI for medical coders and billers includes:
- AI chatbots with NLP capabilities which can speak with patients to get the exact information like registration records for medical coders and billers.
- Ability to analyze patient behavior so billers can prep personalized letters to get payment promptly.
- Perform in-depth scans of medical and billing documents in real-time, and alert billers and coders of any missing, incorrect, or abnormal data.
- Predictive algorithms to pinpoint potential issues, allowing billers and coders to nix them before there's a problem.
It should be emphasized that AI used in the above challenges is not meant to replace human coders and billers. Instead, it enhances their capabilities, especially when taking on more routine and repetitive coding tasks. Coders can then focus on complex cases that truly require their expertise.
Why Medical AI Computers are Right for Medical Coding
Generally, the best computers for medical coders and billers are all-in-one medical PCs. They have been built from the ground up by a true manufacturer to handle the rigors of the job, many of which are unique to the industry. They come with such important features as::
- IP65 front bezel: The screen of the AIO is sealed against dust and liquid. This protects the interior and its delicate components, from accidental coffee spills to cleaner sprays by the cleaning crew.
- Low Computer Fail Rate: The last thing any medical coder or biller wants is for their computers to go on the fritz and lose hours of detailed coding. AIOs built by reputable Original Equipment and Design Manufacturers (OEM / ODM) ensure few such crashes thanks to their low fail rates.
Medical coders and billers using AI will need to upgrade their medical-grade computer to a medical AI box PC. It comes with most of the features of the above AIO medical PC but is optimized for AI:
- GPU: The most important new feature, the Graphic Processing Unit performs the intense parallel processing during NLP and ML operations.
- CPU: The Central Processing Unit handles most of the computer's non-AI operations like data storage.
- RAM and HDD / SDD: Both are essential to handle the large amounts of complex computations run by AI algorithms thoroughly and rapidly.
Medical Coding and Billing Made Easy with Cybernet Medical AI Computers
An essential part of the healthcare industry, medical coding and billing ensures medical documentations have the right code(s) used in everything from data collection to bill payment. Many coders are turning to artificial intelligence as an aid to deal with the increasing number of new codes and more complex documentation.
Contact the team at Cybernet Manufacturing if your medical group is looking for AI solutions for its medical coding and billing department. Our team members will happily go over why our medical computer lineup is the right fit to support your coding needs. This includes the ability to customize our products to meet your exact demands and specifications.