What is a medical billing and coding specialist?
Medical billing is another hot health-care information field and
one you can actually combine with medical coding. Medical coding
assigns numeric and alphanumeric codes to the diagnoses and
procedures found in patient medical records. Medical billing
utilizes the numeric and alphanumeric codes assigned during the
medical coding function. The process of medical billing includes
submitting medical codes on claim forms to payers and so on.
Medical coding is the coding of each patient's diagnosis with an
ICD-9 code, which is a code number that is recognized world wide.
An ICD-9 (International Classification of Diseases, 9th Edition)
book contains a diagnosis code for every illness, disease, injury,
etc. known to man, and is used world wide.
Medical billing is the process of billing the medical companies,
using the transcribed medical information and the diagnosis codes,
to give the insurance companies all of the pertinent data required
to process payment of medical services.