All sepsis now is the condition formerly known as severe sepsis. EDITOR’S NOTE: Dr. Erica Remer reported this story live during the Aug. 13 edition of Talk Ten Tuesday. The following is an edited transcript of her reporting. I’m the co-chair of the American College of Physician Advisors CDI Education Subcommittee.…

Semantics aside, clinicians must recognize sepsis and treat it aggressively, to save lives. A few weeks ago, I had a fascinating discussion with Tim Brundage, a physician friend, and fellow clinical documentation improvement (CDI) expert, my co-chair on the American College of Physician Advisors (ACPA) CDI committee,  and I’d like…

Which definition of the deadly condition will be applied in the Empire State has been a hot topic of late. EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is partial transcript of remarks made by Dennis Jones during a recent RACmonitor-produced Monitor Mondays broadcast. First, let me remind everyone that I am in the…

The accurate diagnosis of sepsis is not for DRG assignment. There has been quite a bit of controversy stirred up by UnitedHealthcare (UHC) and its approach to sepsis, and since I am wrapping up a fascinating targeted sepsis project, I want to share what I have learned with you. I…

The biggest holdout to Sepsis-3 is still CMS. UnitedHealthcare has announced that it will be adopting the Third International Consensus Definition for sepsis and septic shock for all of its lines of business, effective Jan. 1, 2019. This definition is better known as "Sepsis-3." The announcement is significant because it…

AHA Fourth Quarter Coding Clinic identifies problematic diagnosis codes.Hopefully the subject of the most recently published Coding Clinic will not be too scary to discuss. It is effective for discharges from Oct. 1, 2017 forward. The majority of this issue (94 of the 111 pages) provides some background to the…

In the coding and clinical documentation community, we are still trying to sort out sepsis. In my previous article on this topic (https://www.icd10monitor.com/sepsis-then-and-now-how-the-oldest-disease-continues-to-plague-providers-part-ii), I made some recommendations on how to approach sepsis. We need to revisit this.We have now had some time to live with the Sepsis-3 criteria, established by…

In short, you can avoid sepsis denials when documentation in the patient encounter shows a clear delineation of a non-systemic infection. This is the only ironclad defense that will withstand any and all scrutiny. Sepsis clinical parameters are good for capturing and preempting even early sepsis cases, but unless the…

I want to begin with a coding scenario: sepsis and pneumonia are documented, and the coder captures these conditions and assigns MS-DRG 871 and APR-DRG 720 with severity of illness (SOI) 2.  Sepsis presents challenges for coders as well as clinicians. I want to provide insight into the complex molecular…

Consider the following scenario: A 25-year-old female presents to the ED with RLQ pain, onset three days ago. She reports that the pain is aggravated by palpation. She had just returned from a visit out of the country when she developed nausea with vomiting and fever. On admission, the patient…