Q: I’ve heard lately that outpatient CDI specialists are less likely to be registered nurses. Is there a reason there may be more coders in this arena?
A: While many outpatient CDI specialists do hold an RN credential, there are good reasons for having...Read More »
Q: What guidance do you have for building a denial management team?
A: As with any team, it is important to have the right players working together with identified roles and responsibilities established for each. The members of the denials management team...Read More »
Q: Let’s say a provider documented chronic kidney disease (CKD), 2/2 hypertension (HTN), and diabetes mellitus (DM), and the stage of CKD was not specified, but lab results show patient was in stage 2. Could I assign codes for CKD, stage unspecified, Hypertensive CKD w/ stage 1-4, and...Read More »
Q: We use an electronic system at our hospital, and find it is difficult to query a physician since we all have our own processes. Would you recommend having a set format for a query that is used electronically?
A: This is going to be contingent on the system your...Read More »
Q: We are currently coding a chart for an acute kidney injury which has the baseline serum creatinine and urine output missing from the chart. Is there something we can do to identify additional information before we have to query the physician?
