by Rose T. Dunn, MBA, RHIA, CPA, FACHE Good documentation is the best defense against a negative audit outcome. We often find ourselves grousing about Dr. X who never documents something or Dr. Y who notoriously doesn’t enter her notes until the end of the week. Have your chatted with your peers in other practices […]
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by Rose T. Dunn, MBA, RHIA, CPA, FACHE Why are physician practices reluctant to code all conditions? I still see physician offices submitting claims with only four diagnoses (sometimes fewer). The limitation of linking four conditions to a test or service has been interpreted by some providers as a limit on the number of diagnoses […]
read more »by Rose T. Dunn, MBA, RHIA, CPA, FACHE We recently received a note from a colleague: “I have a question about emergency room facility coding regarding hcc. If the pt comes in with headache or rash or other diagnoses such as injuries and the physician states pt has diabetes or hypertension but does not state […]
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by Rose T. Dunn, MBA, RHIA, CPA, FACHE Are you surprised by the denials and audits your organization is experiencing? We shouldn’t be surprised but monitoring everything is tedious and time-consuming. Who has excess staff to do it all? Often we get caught up with all the day-to-day distractions that we forego the opportunity to […]
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by Rose T. Dunn, MBA, RHIA, CPA, FACHE Even though the Hierarchical Condition Categories (HCCs) have been around since 2004, the interest in this categorization methodology by coding professionals is relatively recent. Used by Medicare Advantage, Medicaid, and risk sharing programs, HCCs serve as the basis of defining the complexity of the mix of patients […]
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