have a bro that is an eyeball poker/dr. Just had a con ed class and the last day was about new regs coming soon. He basically is going to have to hire someone to enter all of the additional codes required. Even then, he knows that there are so many, the orders will get rejected anyway and he will end up getting paid less because of how long everything took. He's pretty happy he is 200k in debt for eyeball Dr. school and now he will have to pay someone a lot of what he makes just to process insurance.
Are you talking about ICD-10 codes? Yeah there are a lot more codes, but it will be more accurate billing for everyone. Also I doubt your bro would be doing his own coding whether or not these codes were put into place. It doesn't make sense to have a Dr do work that you can pay someone $20/hour to do
Theoretically, if he's an ambulatory physician (and if he's an ophthalmologist, I assume he is for the most part), he was doing his own billing. Doctor's can do that on their own, but generally, they're very inaccurate and are leaving money on the table or open themselves up to audits. I'd personally discourage it, but there are a lot of doctor's offices that do it this way.
ICD-10 was something that should have happened years ago, and we're one of the only developed countries that haven't moved to it yet. It's going to have a very significant impact on provider productivity going forward, but folks will get around it. Billing is just going to be a mess in Q4 of this year, and probably well into Q1 2015 after the 10/1 conversion date.
Technically, the ICD-10 conversion is not Obamacare. It was apart of the ARRA passed in 2009. I was supposed to go into effect in 2012, but physicians pushed back hard enough that the extended the deadline into 2013.