By Jocelyn E. Murray, RN, CCDS
What are the similarities and differences between CDI audits and coding compliance audits? Are both necessary? It’s our collective responsibility to provide the insight that defines the two specialties and the critical efforts both bring to the table...Read More »
by Richard Pinson, MD, FACP, CCS, and Cynthia Tang, RHIA, CCS COPD and Pneumonia
The requirement for code J44.0 (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease with acute lower respiratory infection) to be coded first when a patient has pneumonia and COPD has been...Read More »
By Allen Frady, RN-BSN, CCDS, CCS, CRC
On October 1, 845+ codes took effect thanks to the fiscal year 2018 IPPS Final Rule, which was released at the beginning of August. As you review the updates, additions, and deletions in this year’s rule, I wanted to answer some of your...Read More »
by Trey La Charité, MD, FACP, SFHM, CCS, CCDS
Unfortunately, I have heard horror stories through the years where a hospital’s CDI specialists do not see eye-to-eye with their colleagues in coding; sometimes, though rarely, I’ve even heard of open hostility between these two...Read More »
By Candace Blankenship, BSN, RN, CCDS
Sometimes I have a dream where every physician has completely and accurately documented the condition of congestive heart failure (CHF) in every record I review.
Then my alarm clock goes off. It’s time for me to get up, get dressed, go...Read More »
By Sharme Brodie, RN, CCDS
The year’s final AHA Coding Clinic for ICD-10-CM/PCS for 2017 includes 114 pages—similar to the page count for the final quarter of 2016. Needless to say, it contains a lot of information.
Let’s start the ball rolling by discussing the...Read More »
The 2017 Surviving Sepsis Campaign (SSC) guidelines to be published in the March 2017 issue of Critical Care Medicine have adopted the 2016 Sepsis-3 definition of...Read More »
Intensive care units are expensive, invasive, and supposed to be reserved for the sickest hospital patients, but more than half the time, they're not needed, according to research from LA BioMed and UCLA,...Read More »
