5 Unexpected Benefits of Autonomous Medical Coding Solutions
Artificial intelligence for medical coding is currently valued at roughly $2.4B globally. And, for good reason: Autonomous medical coding powered by AI can have a big impact on coding efficacy, and on the health system’s bottom line. .
When many healthcare leaders think of autonomous medical coding, they think only of the time and money saved: higher revenue, lower A/R days, lower denials. While these benefits are critical and valid, it is merely the baseline of what autonomous medical coding should do.
A comprehensive autonomous medical coding solution like Arintra provides benefits that extend well beyond this, positively impacting multiple aspects of your organization.
1. Improves Clinical Documentation
Clinical documentation improvement (CDI) is critical for delivering high-quality patient care and ensuring accurate reimbursements. Without proper documentation, patient records can be incomplete or inaccurate leading to coding issues, denied claims and lost revenue. On the other hand, when documentation is precise, you can better identify health conditions and complications and have accurate coding.
An advanced autonomous medical coding solution, like Arintra, analyses patient charts, finding inconsistencies, gaps, and areas of improvement for each provider. From there, it provides specific and actionable feedback for each individual provider. With these insights, providers can easily understand recurring issues and improve the specificity and accuracy of their documentation.
2. Optimizes Coder Productivity
Medical coding is a specialized function. The medical coding industry is projected to grow 9% by 2033, higher than average compared to professions across industries. Among all the revenue cycle roles, medical coders are the most difficult to hire. This makes it likely your coding department isn’t fully-staffed. Even if it is, coders are often overworked on low-value repetitive coding tasks - reducing the efficiency of the revenue cycle process.
An autonomous coding solution will handle the majority of charts, delivering clean charts to billing without any human intervention. The right solution, like Arintra, will also provide coders guidance and relevant information to code the more complex cases.
Your coding team will then have the bandwidth to focus on value added work, such as responding effectively to denials, quality assurance, and process improvements. All tasks that may have gone untouched previously. Industry experts often estimate as many as 50-65% of denials aren’t even reworked once, leaving a lot of money on the table. Focusing coders on high value tasks will increase their productivity, result in higher job satisfaction, and leave less money on the table.
3. Increases Physician Satisfaction
Physicians are busy people on even the best of days. Unfortunately, a lot of their time is lost to documentation. In fact, 80% agree: time lost to documentation impedes patient care. Not only does documentation, including coding, take up valuable time, it only adds to burnout. Burnout can reduce performance and even lead to employee turnover.
An autonomous coding solution can have a big impact here.
- Fewer mistakes are made on coding, resulting in less back-and-forth for physicians
- Coding is accurate, resulting in fewer denials and headaches for physicians
- Coding is completed faster, meaning physicians are reimbursed faster
Your physicians are there to help patients strive toward wellness. When you make coding less of a hurdle, you’re removing one of many barriers that stands between them and that goal. Physician satisfaction increases, patients get the care they need, and everyone wins.
4. Simplifies Audits
Medical coding audits are a necessary process, as time consuming as they are. By performing medical coding audits at regular intervals, you are ensuring compliance, reducing the chances of making repeat mistakes, finding potential ways to streamline workflows, and strengthening your coding processes as a whole (which can, of course, improve revenue).
As important as medical coding audits are, they’re often difficult and time consuming because of data hurdles. Compiling all the necessary data to get a complete view of your coding can require accessing various EHR and payer systems, leave too much room for error, and even result in an inaccurate audit.
With the right autonomous coding solution, you have easy access to detailed audit trails for each coding decision. These details, pulled straight from the patient’s chart, make it easy to perform a complete, accurate audit. On top of this, these audit trails ensure transparency and traceability, leaving no question as to why the automation did something.
5. Seamlessly Scales to Support Growth
Healthcare demands are on the rise. And as made clear by the coronavirus pandemic, sudden spikes can and will happen. Whether it’s an unexpected surge in healthcare needs, a wave of employee turnover, or the steady growth of an aging population in need of care, the demands on your coding team can and likely will fluctuate without notice.
An autonomous coding solution allows you to scale to meet that demand. You can adjust to any documentation volume without needing additional, extensive human resources or significant training or onboarding time. This also allows you to maintain the coding staff you need for more complex cases, providing stability while ensuring every case is worked.
Arintra: Going Beyond the Bottom Line
From staffing challenges to budget cuts to sudden spikes in global healthcare needs, healthcare is rife with uncertainty. While you can’t prepare for everything, nor can you predict the future, you can improve your coding and revenue cycle efficacy through autonomous coding.
With Arintra’s autonomous medical coding, you can go beyond improving your bottom line. Coders get to work at the top of their license, tackling complex, high impact work. Denials are handled in a timely manner, and those previously unworked are now worked at. Audits are simplified, physicians get higher quality documentation, and you can drive continuous improvement in the quality of the clinical documentation. And yes, you benefit from cost savings and improved financial performance.
See how Arintra can help you optimize your coding and revenue cycle management today book a demo.
