Monthly Archives: August 2007

A couple of months ago, I was sitting in a webinar about coding for outpatient medical and nursing procedures billed to Medicare.  As I was led through the maze of arcane formulas and requirements, I got to thinking about how much Medicare has inflated the costs of health care.  Here I was, being paid $40 an hour, as were seven or eight of my nurse colleagues, to listen to consultants (who were surely getting paid way more than I), quote from other consultants (more $$$) about how to fill out papers to maximize the amount of reimbursement the hospital I work for can receive from Medicare.  And this is all because the people who work for Medicare ($$$) issue coding guidelines that are vague and open to interpretation, so that bills are constantly bounced back to providers for more processing ($$$) to justify or explain the charges so they can be rebilled.  What a ridiculously expensive and inefficient process. (more…)