Single-Path Coding Is Changing the Health Information Landscape

Healthcare organizations today face mounting pressure to do more with less—process more encounters, maintain compliance, support accurate reimbursement, and do it all with limited staffing and increasingly complex regulations. At the center of this challenge lies medical coding, a function that directly affects revenue integrity, operational efficiency, and organizational sustainability.

Traditionally, facility coding and professional coding have existed in parallel but separate worlds. Each has its own workflows, reporting structures, reimbursement models, and areas of expertise. While this separation has long been the norm, it has also created inefficiencies, duplication of effort, and inconsistencies that can negatively impact both financial performance and coder experience.

Single-path coding has emerged as a compelling alternative. It represents a shift away from fragmented workflows and toward a unified, encounter-based approach—one that aligns coding accuracy, efficiency, and accountability across the revenue cycle.

To appreciate why single-path coding has gained momentum, it’s important to understand how coding is typically structured. Facility coding focuses on the resources used to deliver care while professional coding reflects the provider’s work in diagnosing and treating the patient. Facility and professional coders work separately coding the same patient encounter. This structure often results in reaching different conclusions and a variation in code assignment. Those discrepancies can lead to denials, rework, delayed payments, and unnecessary administrative costs.

Benefits of Single-Path Coding

Single-path coding is a revenue cycle strategy in which one coder assigns both facility and professional codes for the same patient encounter. Instead of splitting responsibility across teams, a single coder reviews the full medical record, applies all applicable coding rules, and ensures alignment between facility and professional claims. This approach reduces duplication of effort, and it allows coders to comprehensively view the encounter, understanding how provider services, facility resources, modifiers, and reimbursement logic intersect.

This model is not about simplifying coding work; it’s about streamlining ownership and accountability. There must be quality standards set by the healthcare organization, and coders must be appropriately trained for single-path coding to be successful.

There are several factors driving interest in single-path coding:

• Containment of labor cost
• Increased efficiency
• Improved consistency
• Faster reimbursement 

There is also a strategic element to single–path coding for healthcare systems. As staffing shortages persist and patient volumes continue to rise, organizations are rethinking how coding roles can evolve to support long-term sustainability. Single-path coding represents not just a workflow change, but a broader reimagining of how coding fits into the revenue cycle.

Although these factors demonstrate the advantages of single-path coding, organizations and coders must understand this model it is not without challenges. Training requirements are higher, and it’s rare that coders are fully knowledgeable on both coding spectrums. Additionally, the various technologies used by healthcare organizations must be able to support a single-path coding approach. Careful considerations need to be made before organizations make this type of transition so that they can remain successful.

Educational Opportunities for Coders

Single-path coding provides benefits to organizations, and it also offers benefits to coding professionals. Additional training and developing a strong understanding of both facility and professional coding and the related nuances creates career opportunities and advancement for coders. Coders who are considering this type of career transition need to evaluate educational opportunities as well as additional professional credentials that support both facility and professional coding expertise. AHIMA’s Certified Coding Specialist (CCS) and Certified Coding Specialist-Physician-based (CCS-P) credentials are particularly relevant, as they validate proficiency across inpatient, outpatient, and physician-based coding environments. Together, these certifications help coders build the broad knowledge base required for single-path coding and demonstrate readiness or expanded responsibilities.

Single-path coding is not a one-size-fits-all solution. Determining whether it is right for your organization, or your career, requires a clear understanding of the operational, technical, and human factors involved.

On Feb. 27, AHIMA will offer the webinar From Difference to Deployment: The Single-Path Coding Journey to explore these issues in depth. The session walks attendees through real-world examples, outlines practical implementation steps, examines compliance and risk considerations, and shares performance data from organizations that have successfully adopted this model. Whether you are a health information leader evaluating workflow redesign or a coder considering professional growth, this webinar will provide the insight needed to make informed decisions.

As healthcare continues to evolve, so too must coding practices. Single-path coding offers a glimpse into a more unified, efficient future—one that aligns people, processes, and performance. The AHIMA webinar is your opportunity to explore that future and decide whether it fits in your organization and career advancement.

Ericka Coplin, RHIA, CCS, is Senior Manager of Education, Coding & Revenue Cycle Management, at AHIMA.