CMS released the long-anticipated proposed rule for Medicaid recovery audit contractors (RACs) Friday November 5, setting the stage for the targeted April 2011 implementation date.
The use of Medicaid RACs is another initiative put forth by CMS as part of the Affordable Care Act—...Read More »
On October 14, we reported that CMS issued a controversial MLN Matters special edition (SE) article which stated that all inpatient admissions needed to have any/all ‘other’ or ‘secondary’ diagnoses documented by the attending physician.
In the spring, AHIMA released its “Guidance for Clinical Documentation Improvement Programs” in the Journal of AHIMA and also published its 41-page Clinical Documentation Improvement Toolkit. The documents offer sample job descriptions, definitions for documentation clarifications...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 »
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 »
Kaiser Permanente recently donated its electronic database of medical terminology to the National Library of Medicine and the International Healthcare Terminology Standards Development Organization, which oversees the current international standard medical terminology dictionary. Kaiser’s...Read More »
Realizing that the go-live date won’t change, some facilities already have organization-wide ICD-10 implementation strategies in place. If your CDI program hasn’t yet been involved in ICD-10 discussions or if your facility hasn’t starting the planning process yet, consider incorporating elements...Read More »
