ICD-10. The biggest change to happen in health information management in more than 20 years is on your doorstep. You’ll need a step-by-step plan to educate and train staff across multiple departments...
At the annual American Health Information Management Association's (AHIMA) convention in September, AHIMA practice resources managers Kathy DeVault, RHIA, CCS, CCS-P, and Ann Zeisset, RHIT, CCS, CCS-...
One of the challenges in ICD-9 is teaching the difference between coding for adverse effects and poisonings. You have to understand the difference between the two, and you have to also understand the...
The meanings of the seventh character for ICD-10-CM codes vary across chapters and categories. Fracture codes include additional information that can be provided by the extension. When coding for a...
Neoplasms are a form of new, abnormal growth in organs and tissues. The cells do not develop as an organized part of the site where they form, and they may spread to other parts of the body in a...
The billing department will see plenty of payer ¬policy changes as a result of ICD-10-CM. Billers must know how the new policies affect what can be billed and how they must submit the bills under the...
What does "x" represent in ICD-10? What seemed like a fairly straightforward question and answer in a recent HCPro ICD-10 Basics Boot Camp™ class I was teaching actually evolved into more of a tricky...
The Commission on Certification for Health Informatics and Information Management (CCHIIM) recently announced ICD-10 recertification requirements for individuals certified by the American Health...
While attending an American Health Information Management Association ICD-10 course, I was surprised to learn that there is a huge change to the coding guidelines regarding neoplasms. Currently in...
Coders and other HIM professionals generally focus on the ways ICD-10-CM is different from ICD-9-CM—the number of codes, the length of the codes, the look of the codes, the level of specificity, and...
Over the past few weeks through e-mail, at conferences, and during class many people have asked myself and my colleagues what makes the HCPro ICD-10 Basics Boot Camp ™ different from the other...
So, once we start using ICD-10 codes, will you still be able to use a super bill? A super bill is a cheat sheet that many facilities and practices develop, on which they list their top diagnostic...
ICD-10 will change more than just the code sets and will impact more than just your coders. The clinical area will face many changes because so many health plan policies are going to change, says...
In ICD-10-PCS, every procedure falls into one of 31 root operations, which define the objective of the procedure. Although some root operations seem self-explanatory (e.g., transplantation or...
Rule 12 of the 2010 ICD-10-CM Official Guidelines for Coding and Reporting reads: Reporting same diagnosis code more than once Each unique ICD-10-CM diagnosis code may be reported only once for an...
CMS will hold a Special Forum to receive input on the development and implementation of its hospital value-based purchasing program, as required by Section 3001 of the Affordable Care Act. The...
By now everyone knows that coders will need more documentation and specificity to assign the correct ICD-10 codes. And everyone knows that increased documentation has to come from the providers—the...
I often wondered how the ICD-9-CM code set would translate to ICD-10-CM/PCS in regards to MS-DRGs. I couldn’t fathom that along with the costly transition to a new code set, CMS would “double whammy...
The Glasgow Coma Scale provides an objective way of recording the conscious state of a person, for initial as well as continuing assessment. A patient is assessed against the criteria of the scale,...
Sometimes we get really excited about code changes, especially when they have such a huge impact on documentation issues. One such exciting change is in the ICD-10 coding guidelines for Chapter 6:...
If you have taken a peek at a draft ICD-10-PCS Manual , you probably realize that you need to be come familiar with a number of root procedures, some of which you may not even be familiar with. But...
One of the biggest changes in ICD-10-CM is the volume of codes that specify laterality. Providers will need to document which side, right or left, that the injury or diagnosis has occurred for...
I taught the first “official” two-day HCPro ICD-10 Basics Boot Camp™ a couple weeks ago. I was pleasantly surprised that all 50 participants felt the new coding system was easily learned. If I can...
During the ICD-9-CM Coordination & Maintenance Committee Meeting on Sept. 15, CMS representative Pat Brooks, RHIA, announced that the committee had finalized the decision to implement a partial...
One of the things that is not changing between ICD-9 and ICD-10—which often takes hospital coders by surprise—is that coders of professional services cannot code diagnoses documented with the terms “...
When coding with ICD-10, there may be terms that neither your coders nor your physicians are used to using. Now is the time to pass on this knowledge to your medical staff so they can understand what...
The switch to ICD-10-CM will change more than just your code choices. It will also change how physician offices practice medicine. All of your offices' policies will have to be revised to fit ICD-10-...
So, by now you know ICD-10-CM codes contain more specificity than many ICD-9-CM codes. After all, we’re going from 13,000 codes to 68,000 codes. So where will that increased specificity show up? One...
Although I'm sure these great contributors to the field of medicine will live on in many other publications, ICD-10-PCS coding manuals will no longer include eponyms. So you not only need to be...
Mark your calendars because on August 13, you'll have the opportunity to register for the September 15-16 ICD-9-CM Coordination & Maintenance Committee Meeting in Washington, DC. As required by...
October 1, 2013 is not the only deadline to be concerned with. If you submit electronic claims, you should complete internal testing with Version 5010 by January 1, 2011 so that you are prepared for...
The network of relationships between the ICD-9-CM and the ICD-10-CM code sets is named the General Equivalence Mappings (GEMs) . It’s like trying to translate from one language to another. Sometimes...
Many of the changes to the 2010 ICD-9-CM codes were additions to the external causes of injury and poisoning E codes (E800–E999). Activity codes were added to give context as to what the person was...
If you've been wondering whether the American Hospital Association (AHA) plans to convert guidance it has published in Coding Clinic over the years to include ICD-10 codes, the answer is no. "I am...
The Association of Clinical Documentation Improvement Specialists (ACDIS) recently submitted a comment to CMS explaining its position against the proposed code freeze. ACDIS' comment stated the...
I was reading a recent Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) letter to CMS commenting on the 2011 inpatient prospective payment system proposed (IPPS) rule, specifically their recommendations...
On June 23, CMS issued MLN Matters Special Edition article #SE1019 , which is intended to provide healthcare entities more information about the implementation of ICD-10-CM and ICD-10-PCS. In...
As we continue our journey toward ICD-10 implementation, certified coders will need to show their proficiency in the new coding system. For holders of an American Academy of Professional Coders (AAPC...
Can you believe it has been about 18 months since the Department of Health and Human Services announced in the Federal Register that ICD-10-CM and ICD-10-PCS would be implemented on October 1, 2013?...
At the recent American Health Information Management Association ICD-10 Summit in Washington, DC, several attendees were heard discussing the 3-day rule (sometimes called the 72-hour rule),...
In ICD-9-CM, you can find the burn codes in the range of codes 940-949. If you were to try to find a code due to a corrosive burn, the Alphabetic index would direct you back to the main term "burn."...
I have noticed an influx of new information on various organizations' websites related to ICD-10. If you're not a regular visitor to these websites, now is a good time to poke around and do some...
This month’s training tool in HCPro's Medical Records Briefing newsletter was a series of quiz questions about surgical root operations to prepare for ICD-10-PCS. Have some fun with your coding peers...
Aside from emphasizing that October 1, 2013, will be the date that everyone will begin to use ICD-10, Pat Brooks, senior technical advisor at CMS, explained the following during the March 23 ICD-10...
ICD-10-PCS is drastically different from the ICD-9-CM Volume 3 procedure codes. Just looking at the physical appearance, you’ll see that the procedure codes in ICD-9-CM have a maximum of four digits...
Earlier this week, we posted the following ICD-10 pop quiz question submitted by Asad Ali Rizvi of Quadax Inc: Because ICD-10-CM is alphanumeric, what should you keep in mind about the code structure...
In a recent ICD-10 Watch post , we asked blog subscribers to see if they could stump their peers with their own ICD-10 quiz question. See if you can answer this question submitted by Asad Ali Rizvi...
Many ICD-10 authorities agree that there are a number of myths and misconceptions floating around about the transition to this new coding system. So why not get information straight from the horse's...
Still trying to understand how to use CMS' General Equivalancy Mappings (GEMs)? The American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) issued a lengthy practice brief titled, "Putting the ICD...
Budgeting for ICD-10 requires much more than just planning for the actual implementation. What happens to your business after the go-live date (October 1, 2013 in case you haven't heard!) once you've...
