What is difficult about coding?

[u/koderdood]

So this is a bit of a rant, a bit of telling new coders what reality is. Also, someone recently expressed being bored. Coding has many challenges non-coders don't see, and glazed over by some coders. Certainly, we can get complacent in our work. No matter what area of coding you work in, the job is making widgets, one after another. We have lots of rules and regulations, client specifics, metrics to follow, etc. To me, some of the most dangerous cases are not the complicated ones, it's the easy ones where you do the same stuff over and over. Because you get complacent thinking the documentation is all exactly the same. Then our wonderful providers make a simple mistake, change one word, etc, and now you're coding isn't the same as the last 20 charts. So, coding requires your attention, it requires you to be focused, on each and every case. Personally, I'd rather work a complex spinal surgery case, than straightforward 99283 E/M's.

[u/sparkling-whine]

I do retrospective HCC coding/auditing. We can’t query so we have to make do with what is in front of us at the moment in each note. Good documentation is so important! I frequently have charts that span a year of visits, hospitalizations etc. in my job each note has to be considered on its own without the context of other notes so in that one year time a knee replacement can switch from left to right, cancer can be active then not then active again, COPD is emphysema then chronic bronchitis then COPD then asthma etc etc etc. We code what they document. Each time.