Introduction
Medical facilities have an increased demand to comply with the coding, documentation, billing, and reimbursement practices to perform effectively. Healthcare organizations must adhere to governmental agencies’ regulations and guidelines to ensure that they are adequately reimbursed for the health services offered to their clients (Callaghan et al., 2022). Some billing and coding principles include the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). The billing and coding guidelines provide positive impacts by ensuring patients are billed appropriately and receive quality care from healthcare providers.
Contrast and Compare
One of the billing and coding regulations is HIPAA, and it offers guidelines that all medical centers, mainly those using electronic records to gather and store clients’ financial, administrative, and personal data, must follow. HIPAA aims to establish a standardized data interchange platform between insurance firms, healthcare providers, and government bodies, whereby the model requires uniform data upload for easy data reading and interpretation by other parties. Another regulation is ACA, which entering of correct code sets and patient information into the healthcare system (Callaghan et al., 2022). Even though there exist differences between ACA and HIPAA billing and coding regulations, one fundamental similarity is that they ensure that patients are billed appropriately, and their database is protected.
One way in which these billing and coding regulations impact reimbursement is that they reduce intentional or unintentional errors, which cause denied, delayed, and partial payment during repayment, thus minimizing revenue loss to healthcare organizations. The regulations enhance medical centers’ transparency and accountability by ensuring that clients receive optimal care, enabling a speedy reimbursement process due to declined complaints (Callaghan et al., 2022). The prospective payment systems ensure no misfiled databases, allowing a cost-effective structure, thus enabling sufficient operations in the hospitals, whereby the patient receives fast healthcare services and hospitals are reimbursed within a short period.
Conclusion
Some of the core billing and coding regulations include HIPAA and ACA. One of the critical similarities of these guidelines is that they ensure clients database is safeguarded and are billed appropriately for easy reimbursement for healthcare organizations. The billing and coding guidelines substantially impact reimbursement as they minimize errors and improve medical centers’ accountability and transparency, ensuring the clients receive optimal care and reducing ethical issue complaints.
Reference
Callaghan, T., Haeder, S. F., & Sylvester, S. (2022). Past experiences with surprise medical bills drive issue knowledge, concern, and attitudes toward federal policy intervention. Health Economics, Policy, and Law, 17(3), 298-331.