It is no surprise to anyone how much healthcare costs these days. Well, maybe it is still a surprise, but not a pleasant one. The US spends far more per capita on healthcare than any other developed country — $7,538 per person, compared to $3,129 in the UK, $4,079 in Canada, and $5,003 in Norway (the second-biggest spender), according to 2008 totals compiled by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

This topic was inspired by The Pump Handle and their article, “Physician Administrative Costs in the US vs. Canada.” There are many contributors to these costs and that could be debated for far longer time than we have here, but it is no argument that one contributor to our high healthcare costs is high administrative costs. With the gazillion healthcare plans with their very different policies, guidelines and rates, the time a physician and staff spend with payers will soon outweigh the time spent with the patient.

One fairly large portion of those administrative costs includes medical coding and ensuring its accuracy. This is something that requires specialized expertise and systems tailored to regulatory requirements. Access Innovations, developer of the M.A.I. machine assisted indexing system and specializing in complex coding, tagging, and indexing, provides a range of services that deliver tag integrity. Access Innovations provides training to a client’s staff and then offers quality assurance and validation services that can assist in minimizing the risk of a coding error and identify inappropriately applied tags.

Many widely used tagging systems lack the user friendly interface and may not implement a rigorous ANSI compliant coding subsystem. Access Innovations’ solutions are ANSI compliant and implement state-of-the-art technology to speed tagging and reduce errors. For more information, contact Access Innovations.

Melody K. Smith