Inpatient and Outpatient Medical Coding

In the world of medical coding, there are two pretty individual groups of people who do the work:

1. Individuals who perform medical coding for hospital ER�s, physicians offices and private clinics. These people are most often referred to as �Outpatient Medical Coders�.

2. Individuals who perform medical coding in major hospitals. These people are most often referred to as �Inpatient Medical Coders�.

If you are interested in a medical coding career, it will be important to understand the difference between outpatient medical coding and inpatient medical coding. This might be best understood through example.

Say you go in for a procedure that requires you to be admitted to the hospital and stay overnight- this medical coding activity requires the skills of an inpatient medical coder. Say you have a procedure performed on a same-day basis and are not admitted to the hospital for an overnight stay then it is a job for an outpatient medical coder.

Many surgeries that at one time required admission to a hospital are currently being performed routinely on an outpatient basis � which means you go in and have the surgery and return home the exact same day without actually being admitted to the hospital.

As you may suppose, there is a significant difference in the skill set required to apply medical codes to intricate inpatient operative reports vs. the skill set required to apply proper medical codes to a report for a cut or a stubbed toe in a clinic setting.

In truth, most medical coding is outpatient. The trend is for physicians and hospitals to perform progressively more of their procedures on an outpatient basis.

Most beginning medical coders are going to launch their careers performing outpatient medical coding.

Inpatient medical coders are generally trained or mentored on the job and come from the ranks of outpatient medical coders. This produces loads of opportunities for advancement over time.

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Chris Dunn enjoys writing articles about medical coding. See also: About-Medical-Transcription.com.