Q:I have heard that some facilities have seen their number of generated queries actually increasing rather than decreasing over time. Generally, we hope that by improving the documentation concurrently, we would decrease the need to ask the questions retrospectively. If...Read More »
At the September 15, 2010 ICD-9-CM Coordination & Maintenance Committee Meeting, the committee implemented a partial freeze for both ICD-9-CM codes and ICD-10-CM and ICD-10-PCS codes prior to the start of ICD-10 on October 1, 2013.
The partial freeze will occur as follows:...Read More »
Patients who survive sepsis infections face a long battle with cognitive and physical decline, according to research from University of Michigan Health System physicians that will be published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) today, Oct. 27. Theodore "Jack"...Read More »
MS-DRG 432 (cirrhosis and alcoholic hepatitis with MCC) is one of many MS-DRGs slated for RAC validation audits by HealthDataInsights and Connolly Healthcare, two of the four RACs nationwide.
RACs may target this particular MS-DRG for a variety of reasons, says...Read More »
Q: Recently, a consultant suggested that if we asked the physician to clarify systolic/diastolic on a query form for congestive heart failure (CHF) it might be construed as leading the physician if there had been no previous mention of...Read More »
A recent MLN Matters article has changed the official coding guidelines to define what documentation can be used for assigning secondary diagnoses, leaving some CDI specialists worried that it provides RACs with the ability to invalidate any diagnoses not specifically documented by the...Read More »
