One of the key trends to emerge from last month’s JP Morgan Healthcare Conference was the shifting mindsets of hospitals. For the last decade, hospitals have had a defensive mindset; acquiring or merging with smaller hospitals and physician practices to outpace their competitors and grow top line revenue. But to receive the full payoff of this consolidation, hospitals need to …
In coding, like most every other area of life, there is not one solution for every organization’s potential problems. Coding is an ever-expanding area of focus for most every healthcare organization, and nearly every health system and the facility has or is making substantial investments in coding staffs and making these departments more robust. There are hurdles and copious challenges …
Preparing For the Upcoming Cancer Registry Changes: Time Is Short, but Support is Available By Susan Mackenzie, MRA For those of us working in the cancer registry profession, you are likely very much aware of the significant changes upon us that will dramatically alter the way we work and how we collect required data for the registry. The upcoming changes …
By Karen Gallagher Grant, RHIA,CHP, COO Planning for an electronic health record (EHR) or technology conversion is slightly different for every hospital or health system, but some clear commonalities must be taken into account. During my career, I have seen some really great models, but also some bad and even ugly approaches. What follows are some of the not so …
One of the more prominent guidelines found in the ICD-10-CM Official Guidelines for Coding and Reporting is Section III. Reporting Additional Diagnoses but it isn’t always applied appropriately. The guideline states: For reporting purposes the definition for “other diagnoses” is interpreted as additional conditions that affect patient care in terms of requiring: clinical evaluation; or therapeutic treatment; or diagnostic procedures; or …
Recently, we’ve had a number of conversations with healthcare leaders concerned about their evaluation and management (E/M) coding levels being out of synch with Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) guidelines, and who wanted to review their processes to ensure compliance. Concerns over whether coding departments (if not outsourced) are properly notating the coding level of care provided seems …
Let’s first look at what a Swan-Ganz catheterization is and how the procedure is performed. The Swan-Ganz catheter is synonymous with a pulmonary artery catheterization. It was named in honor of its inventors who were Jeremy Swan and William Ganz from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in 1970. It is a flow-directed catheter with a balloon tip that is inserted via an …
As I reflect on all the changes in the field of health Information, we continue to face exciting times and the ability to reinvent ourselves. Why is that exciting? Because we can create something that doesn’t exist. We need to lead the way for our teams of the future in order to encourage our professionals to increase their knowledge by …
The HITECH Act (The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health) was enacted as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The law was created to promote the “adoption and meaningful” use of health information technology. The Act instructed the Secretary of HHS to strengthen an individual’s access rights in important ways. One way is by instructing HHS to clarify …
The pace of change, consolidation, and ever-increasing pressure on revenue and financial stability in the healthcare industry is enough to make our heads spin on a daily basis. Couple that with the onslaught of government and commercial payer audits and denials, it’s no wonder healthcare organizations are in denial about the state their denials. Feeling overwhelmed and inundated with payer …