Recovery Auditors (previously called Recovery Audit Contractors [RAC]) saved Medicare nearly $500 million in Fiscal year (FY) 2011, according to...Read More »
"Don’t let the relative quiet fool you,” says James S. Kennedy, MD, CCS, CDIP, president of CDI MD-Physician Champions in Smyrna, Tenn., “there are big changes in this year’s IPPS final rule, changes that represent a paradigm shift in the way CDI programs work.”Read More »
More than 500 organizations have signed on to participate in CMS’ “Bundled Payments for Care Improvement” initiative, to test whether grouping payments by episode of care can help improve quality and lower costs, according to a CMS release.Read More »
by Trey La Charité, MD
I realized, painfully, early in my career as a physician advisor for CDI that I needed to learn a lot more about coding and the process of translating physicians’ written words into ICD codes. I also needed a more secure footing to successfully appeal the ever...Read More »
Q: We recently had a case where the patient was admitted from the ED with pneumonia but the attending hospitalist diagnosed acute bronchitis because the chest x-ray did not show infiltrates or any of the verbiage indicating possible pneumonia.
by James P. Fee, MD, CCDS, and Garry L. Huff, MD, CCS, CCDS
Certainly, the alphabetical and tabular index of the ICD-9-CM codebook assume the “postoperative” relationship as causal, but a CDI specialist should investigate this further within the specific clinical context.Read More »
AHA Coding Clinic for ICD-9-CM released its third round of ICD-10 coding guidance in its Second Quarter 2013 issue. HCPro CDI Education Director Cheryl Ericson, MS, RN, CCDS, CDIP, AHIMA approved ICD-10-CM/PCS trainer, says the guidance contains several questions about procedures which may be...Read More »
It was around the time of the ACDIS annual conference when Bonnie I. Epps, RN, MSN, manager of CDI for Emory Healthcare in Atlanta, started researching the effect of expanding her CDI program to include pediatric and neonatal units. When asked why she was interested in expanding...Read More »
