With increasing healthcare costs and patient responsibilities, healthcare providers are now facing major pressure to keep up with the latest trends for their medical billing and coding service needs. Providers also lose more than 20% of actualized revenue due to poor Revenue cycle management strategies and lack of billing expertise. When it comes to Cardiology, the stakes are higher due to the complex nature of the specialty.

Every specialty needs its own prioritized solutions to increase revenue for the practice. Here are the top 6 ways to improve your diagnosis and thereby your medical billing and coding for cardiology.

• Documentation – Incomplete documentation is one major cause of reduced collections in cardiology. Coding for cardiology is as such tricky and any insufficient documentation results in inaccurate coding and this in turn may leave you exposed to unwanted audits. Documentation should be complete and legible. Prioritizing and giving attention to some simple nuances like documenting factual input, updating information as and when an encounter occurs and confirming all the information by signing, can save thousands in revenue for the practice.
• Understanding Comorbidities – Comorbid conditions denote the presence of one or more pre-existing conditions along with the primary diagnosis that can significantly affect patient management and treatment options. It is imperative to clearly document the comorbid conditions in his medical record, and it is equally important for the condition to be identified and reported. This helps the payer understand other conditions of the patient and can help in the better analysis of the cost that can be incurred for the patient. Providers are also reimbursed at a higher rate when reported with the presence of comorbidities. E.g Treatment options and plan of care and patient management provided to a patient with no underlying chronic conditions like Diabetes would be less complex than that provided to a patient with chronic diabetes.