The global medical coding industry was worth $15.2 billion in 2019. As per the estimates of P&S Intelligence, a market research company based in India, the market will advance at a CAGR of 9.6% between 2020 and 2030. Furthermore, the market is predicted to reach a value of $42.4 billion by 2030. The increasing prevalence of insurance frauds and the rising demand for modernizing hospital billing methods are the main factors fueling the growth of the market.
The prevalence of insurance frauds is growing rapidly, especially in the healthcare industry. This is causing huge financial losses for various businesses and organizations. According to the findings of the National Health Care Anti-Fraud Association (NHCAA), the high occurrence rate of insurance frauds is resulting in losses amounting to billions of dollars for companies across the U.S. every year. Furthermore, in the country, nearly $3.6 trillion was spent on various healthcare services in 2018.
This amount included expenditure on medical services and goods, investments related to medical care, public health activities, and net cost of healthcare insurance. This represented billions of health insurance claims, amongst which, a few were found to be fraudulent. Apart from these, the rising requirement for modernizing medical billing procedures is also driving the expansion in the market. The adoption of medical coding systems, particularly the current procedural terminology (CPT) medical code, has made medical billing procedures highly effective.
This medical code has been formulated by the American Medical Association (AMA) for standardizing and facilitating medical billing procedures. There are several alpha-numerical codes present in the coding system, that are developed for describing various services and treatments that doctors perform on their patients. These code sets are defined and put into a database, that is used to bill insurance firms for their services. This billing system helps medical practitioners keep a better track of financial records.
Depending on end user, the medical coding market is divided into diagnostic enters and hospitals. Of these, the hospitals category is predicted to register higher growth in the market in the future years. Medical coding procedures are extensively used by hospitals for revenue management. The rising incidence of chronic diseases throughout the world and the increasing requirement for hospital visits are propelling the advancement of the category in the market.
Globally, the medical coding market is predicted to demonstrate rapid progress in the Asia-Pacific region in the forthcoming years. This will be because of the rising digitization of the records of patients in several regional countries such as South Korea and India and the surging pool of people availing various health insurance services. Additionally, the presence of a large patient population is further boosting the advancement of the market in this region.
Hence, it can be said with full confidence that the market will demonstrate rapid growth all over the world in the years to come, mainly because of the rising digitization of healthcare billing methods, the rising incidence of insurance frauds, and the growing requirement for better and more effective medical billing procedures.