by Richard D. Pinson, MD, FACP, CCS
The diagnosis and documentation of respiratory failure continues to be challenging for coders, documentation specialists, and physicians. Many physicians, including pulmonologists, are unaware of the current clinical standards for diagnosing...Read More »
AHA Coding Clinic for ICD-9-CM released its Third and Fourth Quarter 2014 edition of ICD-10 coding guidance. HCPro CDI Education Director Cheryl Ericson, MS, RN, CCDS, CDIP, AHIMA approved ICD-10-CM/PCS trainer, discusses information included in the releases as...Read More »
The Congressionally mandated ICD-10 delay this spring gave providers an extra year to train and test for the transition, but also delayed implementation progress for a majority of providers, according to the latest...Read More »
Malnutrition is at its most basic level any nutritional imbalance. While it can be overnutrition, such as being overweight, obese, or morbidly obese, providers more commonly equate malnutrition with undernutrition, which is a continuum of inadequate intake, impaired absorption, altered transport...Read More »
Inpatient coders are familiar with risk-adjusted methodologies—where a combination of diagnoses lead to higher-weighted code groupings--but many outpatient coders may not have encountered them.
That's likely to change as hierarchical condition category (HCCs)
"[Recovery Auditors] are doing a really good job at identifying the patients who don't have sepsis, and they're taking the money back," says ACDIS Advisory Board member Robert S. Gold, MD, CEO of DCBA, Inc., in Atlanta.
