Guest post: Querying for clinical validity

by Erica E. Remer, MD, FACEP, CCDS

Some clinicians may interpret a query as an affront to their clinical judgment. This is not your intent. You are trying to determine whether a condition was present and whether it should compliantly be coded or not.

Here is an example of how a coder would provide the clinical indicators in the affirmative for the clinician to answer the query in regards to an intimated diagnosis:

Dear Dr. So and So,

The SCr was 3.4 and two days ago it was 1.4. You documented “renal dysfunction likely due to contrast.” Is there a diagnosis that corresponds to this?

You can also provide the physician with the documented diagnosis and the clinical indicators which make you skeptical:

Dear Dr. So and So,

You documented that this patient had pneumonia in the history and physical assessment. Over the course of the next three days, the repeat chest x-rays were read by the radiologists as “no infiltrate,” the sputum and blood cultures did not grow any organism out, and antibiotics were discontinued. However, the impression list continues to list “pneumonia.” Based on this information, please confirm the patient’s condition and your medical decision making, clinical support for the diagnosis in the medical record. If pneumonia was ruled out, please amend the assessment and plan, diagnosis list.

If a physician advisor supports the coding and CDI departments involve him or her in the process. The physician advisor can help create internal clinical guidelines to help providers ward off CVDs by standardizing criteria.

Make sure your providers see coders and CDI professionals as an ally, not an adversary, and that goal of CDI efforts is to protect both the physician and the facility from unnecessary denials.

Become educated

The last step is education—both for the CDI staff and for the physician.

Physicians often don’t know about clinical validations denials. When they occur, share them with providers. Point out what could have prevented them. Reinforce the good habit of documenting their thought process and explaining why they are doing what they are doing to and for the patient. Don’t accept responses to queries with only diagnoses and no clinical evidence supporting them.

Educate CDI and coding teams. If you have regular staff meetings, you can discuss topics which seem to be eliciting clinical validation denials. Changing clinical criteria may herald impending denials. Crowdsource best approaches to specific clinicians and specific conditions. Have joint discussions between coders and the CDI staff.

Clinical validation denials require time, energy, and resources to revisit patient encounters coded in the past. Concurrent clinical validation practices can prevent future denials by shoring up clinical support of valid diagnoses and eliminating others. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Editor’s note: This article, written by Erica E. Remer, MD, FACEP, CCDS, founder and president of Erica Remer, MD, Inc., Consulting Services, first appeared in its entirety, in JustCoding. Advice given is general. Readers should consult professional counsel for specific legal, ethical, clinical, or coding questions. Contact her at icd10md@outlook.com.