There's no guarantee a doctor will know what their procedures will get coded as. Doctors who join hospital networks are also often surprised when their learn wh

There's no guarantee a doctor will know what their procedures will get coded as. Doctors who join hospital networks are also often surprised when their learn what their patients get billed. You can literally get a degree in medical coding, and practices employ medical coders to extract as much money from medicare and insurance as possible by exploiting the system. The salaries of these coders might appear on your hospital bills. Consulting groups, CMOs and billing departments might change codes depending on what insurance or medicare will accept. Like trying to bill one surgery as three separate codes. There's corrupt back room work that doctors may never see depending on the practice. There are some corrupt doctors who work in specialist networks to suggest how to code the most profitably for procedures, but I consider that different than doctors who do regular day to day practice for a larger entity and know less about how their work gets billed (and might not have a direct say in it either unless they're on the board).