A recent report released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed that almost 70% of Americans are considered overweight or obese. This epidemic costs American healthcare systems approximately $190 billion per year in treatment of weight-related conditions.
The advancement of accurate and compliant coding efforts brings unique challenges. As benevolent as a health information management (HIM) department’s mission may seem to be, for many facilities, the focus of physician queries continues to be “optimizing” information in the medical record to increase reimbursement.
CMS' Bundled Payments for Care Improvement Advanced model will qualify as an Advanced Alternative Payment Model under the Quality Payment Program and include outpatient episodes.
James S. Kennedy, MD, CCS, CDIP, says that since the clinical intent and language of physicians does not translate into the administrative language of ICD-10-CM, understanding and embracing both their clinical foundations is essential to accurately measure outcomes and ensure coding compliance.
A clinical documentation improvement (CDI) team can rapidly lead to quality improvements, according to a recent survey conducted by Black Book Market Research.
Rose T. Dunn, MBA, RHIA, CPA, FACHE, FHFMA, CHPS , writes about how one of the many coder obligations is to report noncompliant activities and provides information on how to do this anonymously. Note: To access this free article, make sure you first register here if you do not have a paid subscription. Once you have set up your free registration, you can log in and access this article by clicking here.
Shannon Newell, RHIA, CCS, explains that pneumonia discharges impact hospital payments under the Hospital Value-Based Purchasing Program, as well as the Hospital Readmission Reduction Program, and conveys what CDI teams can do to help.
Q: I manage an inpatient coding department, and I am considering having them cross-trained. Are all coders usually cross-trained? And where would be the best place to train my staff?
To charge or not to charge--that is the question. Determining whether a hospital can charge for certain services and procedures provided at a patient's bedside is a task often fraught with confusion and uncertainty.
