Guest Post: Protecting documentation from clinical validity denials

by Erica E. Remer, MD, FACEP, CCDS

Clinical validation denials (CVD) result from a review by a clinician, such as a registered nurse, contractor medical director, or therapist, who concludes, retrospectively, that a patient was not really afflicted by a condition documented in the medical record and coded by the coder.

If a coder assigns a code for a condition not really present, and removing that code assignment results in a lower-weighted DRG, then it is reasonable for a payer to expect the overpayment back.

However, if the condition was indeed present, medical personnel invested time, energy, supplies, and other resources, the hospital is entitled to reimbursement. Therefore, it is not appropriate to remove a diagnosis which was genuinely present. It is also unfair to remove legitimate diagnoses, because this results in the downgrade of severity of illness and complexity of management, and falsely deflates the quality measures assigned for that patient’s care.

Thorough documentation

It has never been reasonable or compliant for a coder to infer medical conditions from clinical indicators, and it is not reasonable to expect a coder to decide that a condition doesn’t exist if the provider documented it.

The ICD-10-CM Official Guidelines for Coding and Reporting for 2017 states:

The assignment of a diagnosis code is based on the provider’s diagnostic statement that the condition exists. The provider’s statement that the patient has a particular condition is sufficient.

Although the provider’s statement may be sufficient to code a particular condition, it does not mean the condition indisputably exists.

The adage is, “if you didn’t document it, you didn’t do it.” But we all know that is not true. No physician documents every thought or action, and it would be absurd to expect them to do so. The dilemma arises when a physician documents a condition without giving adequate evidence as to what led him or her to make the diagnosis.

Concurrently, a documented diagnosis which is not really present could lead other healthcare providers down an erroneous path. Conversely, not providing clinical support for a valid diagnosis sets the stage for future denials.

The legal definition of the standard of care is managing a patient at the level at which the average, prudent, similarly qualified practitioner in a given geographic medical community, would be providing medical care under the same or similar circumstances. There are clinical guidelines and scores which may assist a clinician in making diagnoses, but prudent practitioners also bring their past experience, knowledge, and judgment into play.

Medicine is an art, not a science, and not every patient “reads the textbook.” Many patients’ lives have been saved by a clinician who followed his or her gut. Just because a patient doesn’t strictly meet clinical criteria, doesn’t preclude him or her from having the medical condition that an astute provider diagnosed.

Is there a standard of documentation similar to that legal definition of a standard of care? The purpose of patient record documentation is to foster quality and ensure continuity of care. It is clinical communication. The fallacy is that documentation needs to be expansive and long; it just needs to convey to the subsequent healthcare provider (as well as the coder, utilization/case manager, auditor, lawyer, etc.) what the provider was thinking and why.

What coders can do

Sensible, qualified, and experienced coders or CDI specialists may read documentation and have concerns that a diagnosis is not supported by the clinical indicators.

Do they just unfailingly code a documented condition because the Official Guidelines for Coding and Reporting say that the provider’s statement is sufficient, or do they query the physician? Which conditions are prone to this? What clinical indicators should they be considering? How does one broach this subject with the physician?

The ACDIS/AHIMA’s Guidelines for Achieving a Compliant Query Practice recommend generating a query when the health record documentation “provides a diagnosis without underlying clinical validation.” It notes that “the focus of external audits has expanded in recent years to include clinical validation review,” and instructs coders to follow CMS and Coding Clinic guidelines, and to “query the physician when clinical validation is required.”

The CMS Statement of Work for the Medicare Fee-For-Service Recovery Audit Program 2013 notes that “clinical validation is beyond the scope of DRG (coding) validation, and the skills of a certified coder.”

I concur that a certified coder who has identified a diagnosis which needs more clinical support does not have the ability to validate it, but has the skills to recognize the necessity for validation.

If your institution has CDI specialists, then you have someone with the appropriate credentials in place to generate a query. The physician is the one who performs the validation by responding to the query in the affirmative, and by providing their clinical evidence for the diagnosis in question.

Editor’s note: This article, written by Erica E. Remer, MD, FACEP, CCDS, founder and president of Erica Remer, MD, Inc., Consulting Services, first appeared in its entirety, in JustCoding. Advice given is general. Readers should consult professional counsel for specific legal, ethical, clinical, or coding questions. Contact her at icd10md@outlook.com. For the second part of this article, return to the blog next week!