Physicians can perform three different types of wound debridement and coders will find different codes for each type. Gloria Miller, CPC, CPMA, and John David Rosdeutscher, MD, discuss the different types of debridement, as well as coding and documentation requirements.
Physicians often use the acronyms IBS (which should indicate irritable bowel syndrome) and IBD (which should indicate inflammatory bowel disease) interchangeably even though they represent completely different conditions with different treatment and prognoses.
Coding for physician services doesn’t always match coding for facility services, which can cause problems for coders who code records for both. ED E/M is one area where different rules come into play.
The digestion process is complex and there’s a lot that can go wrong. Thankfully, Robert S. Gold, MD, unravels the topic of mechanical and paralytic ileuses in this week’s article.
Coders can run into two types of edits that may require them to append modifier -59 (distinct procedural service) to override: National Correct Coding Initiative (NCCI) edits and medically unlikely edits (MUE). Sarah L. Goodman, MBA, CHCAF, CPC-H, CCP, FCS, and Susan E. Garrison, CHCA, CHCAS, CCS-P, CHC, PCS, FCS, CPAR, CPC, CPC-H, explain the differences between the edits and how to correctly determine when to override the edit.
New clinical guidelines for malnutrition could help alleviate compliance challenges associated with coding the condition, which has never had universally accepted clinical criteria.
To correctly assign codes for any surgical procedure, coders need to have an operative (OP) report. But simply having the OP report isn't enough. Coders also must be able to read the report and pick out the important information.
Why do coders need to know about Value Based Purchasing, the Readmissions Reduction Program, and Hierarchical Condition Categories codes? Glenn Krauss, RHIA, CCS, CCS-P, CPUR, C-CDI, CCDS, explains why it all comes back to coding accuracy and complete documentation.
An absence of start and stop times is one of the more frequent challenges that coders face when reporting injections and infusions. Denise Williams, RN, CPC-H, and Jugna Shah, MPH, highlight some other challenges to help coders determine how to code for injections and infusions.
By now, you may have heard that the ICD-10-CM codes are more specific than those used in the ICD-9-CM system, and fracture coding is one of the areas undergoing the most changes. Shannon McCall, RHIA, CCS, CCS-P, CPC, CEMC, CPC-I, CCDS, discusses fracture coding in ICD-10 and some of the expected documentation challenges associated them.
