Medical Billing and Coding Careers - a big change in medical billing and coding careers is on the horizon

There is a big change coming to medical billing and coding careers in the not too distant future.

Today I had a discussion with a senior health information management coding manager. This manager works for one of the largest and best HMOs in the country. She told me that as a result of progress being made in the area of electronic medical records that coders will become code editors, over time.

This means that instead of assigning the codes from the medical record as is done today, they will edit codes that are assigned by doctors via the electronic charting system. She said that this will not reduce the need for medical billing and coding professionals because the demand will outstrip supply, even with this gain in productivity.

It seems that medical billing and coding jobs will change from assigning codes to editing or auditing codes. This makes perfect sense to me because I'm from the software industry and it seems obvious that at some point in the future some or all of what coders do could be automated. I don't see that happening any decade soon, especially considering how slowly the medical and healthcare industry moves.

It will be interesting to see how this change to medical billing and coding careers and jobs manifests itself.