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By Susan Chapman for For The Record Findings from The Joint Commission show many surveyed hospitals house incomplete medical records. When so many aspects of health care revolve around quality documentation, it would be good to know that providers are accomplished medical record custodians. Depending on your perspective, the news on that front isn’t half…
By Mike Bassett for For The Record, Vol. 28 No. 5 P. 16 With the announcement of the proposed rule, the M&M acronyms are quickly becoming top of mind for health care executives. In the long tradition of producing acronyms at a frightening pace, the health care industry has succeeded in producing two more that are rolling…
Article by Mary Butler. This article was originally published on the Journal of AHIMA website on June, 2016 and is republished here with permission. Teachers know there are two kinds of students. Student A studies and does their assigned reading throughout the whole semester, earning extra credit where they can. When the final exam rolls up, they’re…
Article by Mary Butler. This article was originally published on the Journal of AHIMA website on May 19, 2016 and is republished here with permission. October 1, 2016, will mark the end of a one-year “grace period” that allowed unspecified ICD-10-CM codes on certain physician Medicare claims. The grace period was a joint initiative between the Centers…
By Joseph Goedert for Health Data Management Highmark Inc., a Blues plan serving Pennsylvania, Delaware and West Virginia, is giving physicians a financial incentive to increase documentation of diagnostic codes in the electronic health record of patients insured under Medicare Advantage or health insurance exchange programs. Too often, physicians enter a core diagnosis following a…
By Staff for RT Research has discovered that medical error is the third leading cause of death in the United States. With more than 250,000 deaths of this kind annually, researchers from Johns Hopkins University urge addressing systemic problems with the US system. There have been other estimates, including one by the Centers for Disease Control…
By Dr. Jon Elion for ChartWise Medical Systems, Inc. The Clinical Documentation Specialist (CDS) looked a little tentative stepping up to the microphone to ask her question. I had just finished a talk where I shared stories about Clinical Documentation Improvement (CDI) from the point of view of a practicing physician. As her question unfolded, the…
By Susan Morse for Healthcare IT News CMS said it plans to add about 1,900 diagnosis codes and 3,651 hospital inpatient procedure codes to the coding system. On Oct. 1, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will add another 5,500 codes to the ICD-10 diagnostic library, officials announced in a March 9 meeting. The addition will…
By Kelly Gooch for Becker’s Healthcare As physicians look for ways to reduce the clerical load associated with EHR data entry, they are increasingly turning to medical scribes. Scribes help physicians with EHR navigation, retrieval of diagnostic results, documentation and coding. This allows the physician to free up time for patient care. Yet while the…
By Max Green for Becker’s Health IT & CIO Review More than half of the physicians who bill Medicare in the U.S. are currently being penalized 1 percent of their 2015 payments as a result of the meaningful use program, according to Steven J. Stack, MD, president of the American Medical Association. “Imagine, in a world…