On the one year anniversary of President Obama’s milestone healthcare bill (Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act), House Minority Leader, Nancy Pelosi, shares her thoughts on the positive impact the bill has made and will continue to make on job growth, job opportunities and overall quality of life for middle class Americans:

What are your thoughts on the healthcare reform act now that it has been in place for a year? What is your hope for the future of healthcare and the impacts it’ll make on your career and in your life?

Did You Know: Medical Billing and Coding Blog is part of a network of blogs that discuss careers in the allied healthcare field.  Check out our friends over at Medical Administrative Assisting Blog.

President Obama won a hard-fought battle last week.  After months of stalled progress and fiercely partisan debate, the House passed a sweeping health care reform bill with a vote of 219-212.  The $940 billion plan will completely reorganize the American medical system, extending coverage to roughly 32 million additional Americans.

There is coverage of this bill from every major news organization: CNN, NPR, and New York Times to name a few.  The topic is also being discussed across Twitter and the blogosphere.

So how exactly does the bill affect people working in the allied healthcare field?  Whether you agree or disagree with Obama’s policies, it is important to know how they affect you as a medical biller and coder.

1. The bill increases coverage to 32 million additional Americans by requiring most Americans and businesses to have some kind of insurance plan or pay a fine.
2. Parents will be allowed to keep their children on their health care plans until they are 26.
3. Reform will eliminate discrimination based on pre-existing conditions or medical history.  If an individual hasn’t been able to get coverage because of a pre-existing condition, a ban on discrimination for adults will take effect in 2014. Additionally, a pool will be set up for high risk adults to get coverage until 2014. For those of you who have a child with a pre-existing condition, a ban on discrimination for children will take effect immediately.

External sources:  HealthReform.gov, New York Times Health Care Reform Overview

Prediction: All of these provisions, combined with the billions going to electronic health records, predict an increased need for billing and coding specialists in doctors’ offices.  The sudden spike in the number of patients seeking care combined with rapidly changing electronic health records systems could mean more jobs in the allied healthcare field.

While America’s eventual transfer to electronic medical records (EMR) is a foregone conclusion, the ways in which we accomplish the shift is still being debated. The key is to create a system that makes doctors’ lives easier, and not more difficult. To achieve this goal, medical coding professionals are crucial to the future of electronic medical records.

The most logical interface to aggregate all medical records is the internet. Individual computers that contain medical record information is a method of the past; to maintain all medical records – a  huge amount of  information – a web-based system is the only option capable of immediately updating and maintaining the digital system.

Aside from changing a paperwork-based system that has become standard practice for them, doctors are often times unfamiliar with the pages of coded medical terms that are central to electronic medical records. This is another obstacle that stands in the way of the full adoption of digital health records, and highlights the necessary inclusion of medical coding professionals in healthcare facilities.

Professionals who are trained and experienced in medical coding facilitate the full implementation of electronic medical records. President Obama guaranteed that every American medical record will be electronic by 2014; this means huge job growth for medical billers and coders.

A web-based system of electronic records will improve the overall practice of healthcare. When a prescription is needed from a pharmacy, for example, instead of a phone call or paper slip, the pharmacy will receive the prescription automatically over the internet and will have the medication ready when the patient arrives. Without paperwork, healthcare in America will improve for all parties, and an essential ingredient of this progress are medical coding professionals.

1. Federal stimulus money is being poured into the cause.

a.  As part of President Obama’s “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009”, $19.2 billion is being invested into America’s transition to digital health records.

b.  John Kerry’s recent legislation “The Small Business Health Information Technology Act of 2009” will make family doctors and small medical offices eligible for Small Business Administration loans to cover the costly transition to electronic medical records.

2. Obama has called for mandatory digitization of medical records by 2014.

a.  When Obama was elected president, he guaranteed that all health records in America will be digital by 2014.

b.  As electronic medical records become standard in medical offices and hospitals, so will medical billing and coding specialists.

3.  Major corporations are also helping the cause.

a.  General Electric recently launched a program to increase access to technology, and reduce the cost of transitioning to electronic medical records.

b.  Microsoft and Kaiser Permanente have partnered in an attempt facilitate an efficient and timely transfer to universal digital health records.

4.  Baby boomers are aging.

a.  With the largest generation of Americans entering retirement, more Americans will need medical attention than ever before.

b.  A White House report projects a 48% growth from 2000-2016 in the demand for “healthcare support” workers, a group that includes medical records and health information technicians.  Check out the graph here.

5.  Heavier workloads + electronic medical records = physicians need help

a.  With more Americans needing medical attention, and the shift to digital health records looming, more and more doctors are in need of medical billing and coding specialists to take care of their insurance claims; and the demand will only increase.

How will your career be affected if healthcare reform becomes law? If you’re a billing and coding specialist or student, questions like these have probably been on your mind:

• Will I see a big increase in demand for my services?

• If coverage is increased for eldercare, women’s care and other targeted needs, will that create new opportunities for me?

• If Medicare changes, how will that impact on my career?

Because the healthcare bill is still being modified and debated, there is no way to know definitive answers to those questions. But some predictions are still possible.

Let’s look at what we do know . . .

Millions of additional Americans will be covered if healthcare legislation passes. “The $1.1 trillion bill would expand insurance coverage to an additional 38 million people over the next decade by requiring that almost all citizens have insurance and providing subsidies to those who can’t afford it,” writes Emily T. Walker in MedPage Today.

Source: “House Passes Healthcare Reform” by Emily T. Walker; MedPage Today.

Prediction: The need for billers and coders should increase dramatically if legislation passes.

A number of specialized services will be covered. According to the On Women blog of U.S. News, additional women’s healthcare procedures, including mammograms and cervical cancer screenings, will be covered if the bill passes.

Source: “Women’s Preventive Health Amendment Added to Senate Reform Bill” by Deborah Kotz; On Women blog.

Prediction: An increase in needed services for women and other underserved groups should contribute to a growing need for medical billers and coders.

Medicare will remain a strong and growing program. For assurance that Medicare services will not be diminished if healthcare reform passes, watch “VP Biden Discusses Healthcare with Seniors,” a 90-minute video available on Whitehouse.gov.

Prediction: As America’s population continues to increase (as reported on the U.S. Census), a growing number of older Americans will need medical care – and that should increase the demand for skilled information processors.

While no one can predict exactly how many new jobs will be created by healthcare reform, the outlook seems extremely good for billers and coders – and for the consumers they serve.

Senator John Kerry recently introduced “The Small Business Health Information Technology Financing Act of 2009″, a piece of legislation aimed at aiding family doctors switch to electronic medical records. The Act would make family doctors and other small medical practices eligible for Small Business Administration loans that would cover the costly transition from paper to digital health records. As a senior member of the Finance Committee and former Chairman of the Small Business Committee, Kerry is committed to helping President Obama achieve his goal of digitizing all  American health records  by 2014.

“Electronic medical records and prescriptions are the common sense solution to restricting costs, reducing errors, and reforming a broken system,  Kerry said. “Doctors don’t need convincing — they’ve seen the results.  This legislation helps small practices acquire the technology that will allow them to be more efficient and to focus on patient care.”

Kerry is not a newcomer  to healthcare technology legislation; in 2007 he introduced the Medicare Electronic Medication and Safety Protection  Act of 2007, which required physicians to employ electronic prescription technology.

President Obama discusses America’s transfer to electronic medical records as part of his healthcare stimulus plan. Under his proposal, all medical records in America will be electronic by 2014;  as a result,  healthcare technology professionals, such as medical billers and coders, will continue to be in high demand.

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With billions of dollars being invested into healthcare technology and America’s imminent transfer to exclusively electronic medical records, billing and coding professionals will become increasingly vital to healthcare facilities throughout the country. As more healthcare facilities undertake an electronic medical record system, there will be an increase in job openings for medical billing and coding professionals, a claim supported by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics:

It states that employment levels of medical records and health information technicians are “expected to increase by 18 percent through 2016 – faster than average for all occupations”. The report continues by saying that these professionals “will be needed to enter patient information into computer databases to comply with Federal legislation mandating the use of electronic medical records”.

President Obama’s healthcare stimulus package will serve as a catalyst for the long-awaited shift to electronic medical records (EMR) in America. Obama addressed the American Medical Association in June and said that “We do a better job tracking a FedEX package in this country that we do tracking a patient’s health records”.  Upon assuming the reigns of President, he vowed to change the way we track medical records, and guaranteed that America would move entirely to EMR by 2014.  His stimulus package is a huge step in that direction.

Approximately $19 billion of federal funding is primed for investment into health information technology nationwide. The funding is dispersed across several different sectors that are each necessary components of changing the way we organize and catalog medical records.