Errors and Compliance in Coding
Emella Steele
HCR 220
September 19, 2014
Leverne Laws
Errors and Compliance in Coding
The most common causes of errors in coding and billing are typos, incorrect dates, and being billed twice. Typos, can occur when you are entering in a patient’s name, address, phone number, or even social security number. Even putting in incorrect dates can be apart, for example the time of stay a patient does in the hospital, the patient could of only strayed 10 days, but they get a charge for 12 days. A patient can have surgery that only took 2 hours to complete, but got billed for 4 hours. Double billing mostly occurs when the health care provider tries to bill the patient for two procedures when they only had one procedure done. Or if the patient only took one pill and gets charged for two (this has happen to me before). These problems can be solved in different ways by: 1. Patient can help by reading and reporting any errors that they may notice on their billing statement to reduce double billing. 2. Expertise in coding, the staff should make sure that put the coding and be well trained. 3. There is software that can be used called Scrubbing to help you identify any mistakes that is made. If there is an error the patient can compose and send in a letter explaining the problem and give the correct information. If no action is taken, the patient should contact their state’s consumer protective office. If there is improper coding it can