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By Kelly Gooch for Becker’s Hospital Review Medical coding is a key component of revenue cycle management. When done efficiently and accurately, it helps ensure hospitals are properly reimbursed for the services they provide. Here are 15 things to know about medical coding: AAPC, formerly known as the American Academy of Professional Coders, describes medical coding as “the…
By Tracy Boldt, RN, BSN, CCDS, CDIP, and Ellen Jantzer, RN, MSN, CCDS, CCS, CRC for ACDIS CDI Blog If your organization has an inpatient CDI team, decide if outpatient CDI will share the same reporting structure or if the teams should be separate. A shared reporting structure can allow the new outpatient CDI specialists…
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…
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…
By Sheila Duhon, MBA, RN, CCDS, A-CCRN, CCS for ACDIS Blog It’s often a challenge for CDI specialists to obtain precise documentation of anemia in the medical record. A hospitalist once asked me why I sent him a query for anemia because since he would treat it the same way no matter what, he wanted…
By Tracy Boldt, RN, BSN, CCDS, CDIP, and Ellen Jantzer, RN, MSN, CCDS, CCS, CRC for ACDIS Blog The rules of compliant query practice do not change based on the setting. We must consider query construction and wording of provider communication with the same eye for compliance as we have traditionally done in the inpatient…
By the Economist AFTER a brain aneurysm in 2004, Mary McClinton was admitted to Virginia Mason Medical Centre in Seattle. Preparing for an x-ray, the 69-year-old was injected not, as she should have been, with a dye that highlights blood vessels, but with chlorhexidine, an antiseptic. Both are colourless liquids. The dye is harmless; the…
With its proposed changes to payments and documentation for office visits, the agency is effectively forcing providers to reckon with a longstanding, oft-disputed problem. By Tony Abraham for Healthcare Dive Most healthcare players agree the evaluation and management billing codes used by CMS need an overhaul, but few like the manner to do so proposed…
By Karla VonEschen, CPC for For the Record Correct use of unlisted CPT codes is one of the more confusing aspects of CPT coding for both coders and physicians alike. Although unlisted codes are used only when no code exists to accurately describe a procedure or service, these codes serve an important purpose. With advancements…
By Chris Simons MS, RHIA for ACDIS Blog As the coder or CDI specialist reviews the documentation, he or she will identify opportunities to clarify diagnoses or even to identify conditions that were not previously documented but may be possible given the patient’s presentation. By querying the physician while the patient is still in the…