Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Did you ever think, "What if I water ski so fast my skis catch fire from the friction with the water and I have to jump off of them and maybe drown." Well don't worry under the new medical coding system when they carry you into the ER there will be a code for that so they can appropriately bill your Obamacare provider. It's code V9027XA: “Drowning and submersion due to falling or jumping from burning water-skis, initial encounter.” Apparently the government thinks this situation may be common enough that you may encounter it more than once in your life so they had to identify it as the the "initial encounter". That explains all those screaming balls of fire you see chasing speed boats across the lake.
The government will in October bring on line a new medical coding system that must be used by all healthcare providers. The process is receiving the same testing as the Obamacare roll out, i.e. none. Failure to correctly code your condition will result in the provider not being paid and repeated incorrect coding will result in the provider being penalized (fined). The expected costs for conversion in a small doctor's office is only $83,000. Someone like St. E's or Memorial will pay about $2,700,000. And the government is telling providers to have at least six months of revenue on hand to cover the anticipated delays in payments. Now a three doctor office generates about 2.5 million in revenue so they would need to set aside about 1.2 million dollars and do nothing with it just to survive the year. Add in the conversion costs and it is huge investment just to keep the doors open. But not to worry I'm sure it will be just as successful as Obamacare has been. But on the up side, if you are ever sucked into a jet engine you are covered, V9733XA (Sucked into jet engine, initial encounter), is there ever a second encounter?


 Code Chaos

No comments:

Post a Comment