How CDI transforms documentation from a reimbursement perspective to a tool for patient care and support of quality-based, cost-effective, efficient healthcare.Clinical documentation improvement (CDI) programs have become deeply ingrained in most hospitals as part of a purposely directed strategy to improve financial operations.According to a survey conducted by Black Book…
June 26, 2017
Healthcare: The Glacial Pace of Applying Innovation
Innovation has had a tendency to move at a glacial pace, and world history is littered with scientific discoveries that took a long time to reach us and have an impact on our lives.So many fields such as advanced math and complex numbers discovered in the 16th century were originally described…
June 12, 2017
The Coder-Physician Link: Essential to Patient Care
So here is a different take on how important it is for coders and physicians to have a link with one another, and to respect the professionalism inherent in each field. The 2017 fiscal year ICD-10-CM Official Guidelines for Coding and Reporting recently produced a new guideline (I.A.19) that had…
November 7, 2016
Clinical Coding Reflects Patient Care
Often we talk about the patient care team and who makes up that special group of professional caregivers. We similarly look at the role that the coding professional plays in healthcare and with that team in particular. Certainly there can be clarifications made regarding the “direct” patient care team, and…
May 16, 2016
Ransomware: An Emerging National Threat
The recent ransomware attack on MedStar Health, located in the Washington, D.C./Baltimore area and comprised of 10 area hospitals, is another indication of the current vulnerability of our nation’s medical records. In fact, cyber-invasions represent the fastest-growing threat to clinical information security, according to the FBI. Ransomware affects organizations through the…
October 19, 2015
Offshore Coding: Week 1: Chaos
EDITOR’S NOTE: Dr. Anon is a U.S. physician based overseas who wishes to remain anonymous. Following implementation of ICD-10, what has happened in the coding world as it pertains to outsourcing? The answer is simple: chaos. For those of you old enough to remember, I am not describing a Get…
June 30, 2014
ICD-10 Support is About Clinical Data and Patient Care
There are wide-reaching benefits to clinical data and patient care within the core of the ICD-10-CM/PCS code set, and that is why supporting ICD-10 is the right thing to do. As a health information management (HIM) leader and professional for more than 35 years, I’m extremely passionate about the move…
