General

Book excerpt: Review queries regularly to mitigate denials

By by Trey La Charité, MD, FACP, SFHM, CCDS for ACDIS CDI Blog People are human. This goes for clinicians, coders, and for CDI personnel. Mistakes happen. If left unchecked, however, mistakes become habits. Effective CDI programs understand this and take appropriate steps to ensure occasional mistakes don’t become recurring bad habits. Since the structure and…

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Billions of dollars are pouring into digital health, but Americans are still getting sicker and dying younger

By Christina Farr for CNBC Silicon Valley has spent years promising to disrupt the $3.5 trillion health-care industry. In 2018, venture investors — from the Bay Area, Boston and elsewhere — poured billions of dollars into the sector, funding start-ups that aim to bring down the costs of care while improving quality and access to…

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8 ways speech-recognition software can work for your practice

By Andis Robeznieks for American Medical Association Speech-recognition software is a tool that any size health care organization can use as part of their systematic efforts to improve the quality of the care they deliver and the experience of an office visit for patient and clinician alike. So say two physicians who helped to implement…

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Patient dies hours after being turned away from Wisconsin hospital

By Megan Knowles for Becker’s Hospital Review  A patient at a Franklin, Wis., hospital died of heart disease hours after being sent home to wait for a bed to be freed up for him, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The patient, 46-year-old Spendi Rusitovski, visited the Ascension Southeast Wisconsin hospital Dec. 17 with chest pains. The…

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DRG Mismatches

By Cheryl Ericson, MS, RN, CCDS, CDIP for For the Record When discrepancies occur, the ensuing reconciliation process serves as a prime opportunity to educate CDI and coding staffs. Reconciliation rates monitor both clinical documentation improvement (CDI) and coding proficiency, a key performance indicator. However, many in leadership positions overlook the importance of trending reconciliation…

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Physicians employed by hospitals and corporations more dissatisfied than independent doctors

By Jeff Lagasse for Healthcare Finance A national survey from analytics company Geneia found physicians who are employed by hospitals and corporations are more dissatisfied and burned out than those who work independently and in physician-owned practices. The survey focused on 300 full-time physicians who have been practicing post-residency medicine for more than four years. WHY IT…

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Coding tip of the day: Don’t take non-covered service denials at face-value

By Angie Stewart for Becker’s ASC Review Insurers may wrongly deny a claim and hope providers don’t notice it’s actually a covered service, according to medical coding and billing specialist Steven Verno. Mr. Verno shared the following tip for appealing a non-covered service on LinkedIn: “You need proof that the insurance company is wrong. The…

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Artificial Intelligence: 3 charts reveal what hospitals need in the near future

By Tom Sullivan for Healthcare IT News AI is already having a big impact, but strategic planning is not keeping pace and healthcare organizations need to be proactive about developing tools now. Healthcare executives expect artificial intelligence to be among the most impactful technologies fueling innovation, but few are crafting strategies to advance emerging AI…

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Hospitals slammed with $380M in CMS cuts, industry cries foul

By Samantha Liss for Healthcare Dive Dive Brief: With its final Outpatient Prospective Payment System (OPPS) rule for 2019, CMS is eliminating the pay discrepancy Medicare beneficiaries face visiting a hospital-owned outpatient setting as opposed to a traditional doctor’s office. CMS said cutting reimbursement at hospital-owned outpatient settings for these visits will save Medicare $380 million…

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