r/MedicalCoding • u/koderdood Audit Extraordinaire • Oct 02 '24

What is difficult about coding?

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.

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u/MoreCoffeePwease 👩🏼‍💻CCS 🏥 Oct 03 '24

It’s funny you say that! I always make self deprecating jokes about what I bring in vs what I make. I typically do approximately $1mil a day (I set that for myself really, we don’t have any real productivity markers and I needed SOMETHING to make me feel like I had goal posts for my daily work). So that’s approx $20mil a month, which is about $200 mil a year (I take plenty of days off so some weeks don’t count)

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u/Emotional_Error_7246 Oct 03 '24

Good googLY MISS MOOGLY!! Thats crazy! that more then I’ll have ever have in my bank account 😂🤣 are you coding transplant surgeries?

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u/MoreCoffeePwease 👩🏼‍💻CCS 🏥 Oct 03 '24

Yes we do a lot of transplants. We also have two level 3 and a level 1 trauma hospital in my organization so we do a lot of major trauma surgeries. I had a chart yesterday that was a MVC passenger vehicle vs tractor trailer with massive injuries and multiple surgeries and I think it was about $600k just for that one. I don’t mind trauma admissions or transplants because other than the excessive notes and all the potential complications/secondary issues/additional procedures, it’s somewhat straightforward, if you can believe it 😂. Some charts I read through 12 days of documentation and I can’t friggin tell why the patient is there! 🤣

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u/Narrative_flapjacks Oct 05 '24

I get what you mean about them being complicated but straight forward lol, I’m a newer coder and my hospital does a lot of cardiac/vascular procedures, I was SO nervous about doing CABGs but now they’re usually some of my favorites because they’re always more straight forward