When Lori Belanger, RN, BSN, RHIT, inpatient coder and CDI specialist at Northern Maine Medical Center in Fort Kent, Maine, began to practice coding charts using ICD-10-CM/PCS, she was a bit surprised by how much her productivity decreased.
The advent of electronic media is slowly but surely changing the way we access information. Hospitals and physicians are transitioning from paper and hybrid medical records to EHRs. Estimates indicate that nearly half of all Internet users send or receive email daily, according to EzineArticles.com .
Robert S. Gold, MD, gives coding guidance on primary cardiomyopathy, SIRS, sepsis, acute respiratory distress syndrome, and conditions during the perinatal period.
Now that CMS has finalized a 2014 implementation date for ICD-10-CM/PCS, increasingly more hospitals may turn to computer-assisted coding (CAC) to help ease the transition and mitigate anticipated productivity losses, says Angie Comfort, RHIT, CCS, director of HIM solutions at AHIMA in Chicago.
Do you audit records before sending them to your Recovery Auditor? If not, your hospital may be one of many that simply don't have the resources to do so.
The sheer number and detail of new fracture codes in ICD-10-CM is daunting, leaving many coders to wonder-and worry-about whether physicians will document the information they need to assign the correct codes.
