Medical Billing and Coding Expected to Grow Very Quickly

Employment opportunities for medical billing and coding professionals like technicians, coders, billers, etc. are expected to soar high now. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) estimates a 22% hike in medical billing and coding jobs from 2012 to 2022, where the number of employment in the former is around 186,000 and 227,000 in the latter. Leading business magazine, Forbes reports the US healthcare industry is worth three trillion dollars in the beginning of 2015.

Affordable Care Act

Obama Care, which is formally known as the ACA has an important role in changing the healthcare industry’s scenario. The citizen-friendly act is to ensure that maximum citizens are covered under Medicare and Medicaid. This is followed by substantial increase in the number of patients availing medical facilities at the subsidized prescribed rates. So, physicians will need to be more vigilant than ever in their entire billing process to avoid any penalties and late payments.

ICD-10 to Boost Salaries

The approaching deadline of ICD-10 (October 1, 2015) is one of the biggest reasons for this expected boost in career opportunities for medical billing professionals. Certified professional coders (CPC) are more likely to gain substantial hike than experienced coders in their salaries because of the new training course.

Keeping Up with Rapid Reforms

The implementation of multiple healthcare reforms has brought about major changes in the following areas:

·        Enrolment of citizens into various insurance policies

·        Patient influx in medical facilities

·        Thorough yet just necessary treatment procedures by providers

·        Ensure proper care to maintain patient satisfaction levels

·        Comply with the incentive eligibility criteria

·        Observe rules of documentation for getting duly paid on time, etc.

are keeping providers on their toes. As a result, physicians are getting lesser time to concentrate on administrative and billing tasks, which means that they are more dependent on the billing staff or their outsourced billing partners for their remuneration.

Healthcare Partnerships

Fortune, another leading business magazine reports that the healthcare industry will have to bank upon partnerships for optimizing their services. 40% of the Fortune 50 companies collaborated their services last year, i.e. 2014. Patients are the key elements for a medical facility or any other healthcare service center, and in a recent article published earlier this year stated that around 60% of patients are more likely to select a medical service provider who have merged their services.

Digitalization and Consumer Engagement

The US healthcare is not new to using the electronic medium to carry out operations. However, the usage of electronic health records (EHR), health apps for mobile phones, websites and social media have become an integral part of the patient engagement program and this requires human intervention, which is where the healthcare staff will come in too.

Increase in Salaries

A lucrative salary package is quite a motivation for young and experienced professionals alike. Due to various above mentioned factors, more people are likely to choose to build a career in the medical billing and coding sector.

These facts and figures clearly substantiate that billing professionals will see a bright future with the increasing opportunities for medical billing and coding jobs in the private as well as government sector.