Medical Billing Blog: Section - Medical Coding
Archive of all Articles in the Medical Coding Section
This is the archive containing links to all articles written in the Medical Coding section of our blog.
Click any of the article links below to read the entire article or browse another section to the right to read articles on another subject.
2018 ICD-10-PCS Code Changes
The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) has released the code changes for ICD-10-PCS coding system. ICD-10-PCS codes were adopted under HIPAA for hospital inpatient healthcare settings to use for reporting procedures. Their guidelines help healthcare providers and coders to accurately identify procedures to be reported on healthcare claims. The 2018 updates will reflect services from Oct. 1, 2017 through Sept. 30, 2018, so be sure to update your medical records to account for the changes. There were 75,789 codes in 2017. In 2018, the number jumps to 78,705… Continue reading this article
EHR Data Helps Scientists Detect Heart Failure Earlier
Joint research between IBM Research and Sutter Health led to the development of methods for predicting heart failure using clues imbedded in patient records in Epic EHR technology. Researchers observed the performance of machine learning models designed to detect prediagnostic heart failure in primary care patients using longitudinal data in EpicCare EHRs. “Information that can be gained on populations of patients from longitudinal EHR data can be used to individualize care for a given patient,” Ng et al. stated. “Access to these data in combination with the rapid evolution of modern machine learning and data mining techniques offers a potentially promising means to accelerate discoveries that can be readily translated …
EHR is Still a Top Buying Priority for Physicians
A recent survey of healthcare executives shows that inpatient and outpatient EHR technology are top of mind for provider buying priorities for health IT purchases, trailing only telemedicine. A third of 248 respondents to a Research Data survey listed telemedicine (33%), inpatient EHR (32%), and outpatient EHR (32%) solutions as their current top health IT buying priorities. The three technologies were well ahead of MACRA implementation and patient engagement, both reported by 20 percent of healthcare executives, as health IT purchasing priorities. The greatest number of respondents — ranging from healthcare CEOs, CIOs, and CFOs to IT, medical, and nursing directors — working in standalone hospitals (47%) and integrated delivery …
RCM tip: MACRA calls for a cross-departmental effort
Healthcare organizations should seek cross-departmental collaboration in preparing to manage and execute Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act initiatives, according to Joncé Smith, vice president of revenue cycle management at Stoltenberg Consulting. Ms. Smith shared the following tip with Becker’s Hospital Review. “Although many may see the IT department as the owner of an initiative like MACRA, true progress can only be achieved from a cross-departmental collaboration among financial, clinical and IT departments. Financial leaders serving on this committee should be responsible for managing the organization’s reporting path, including working with clinical leaders to select the appropriate program measures under either the APM or MIPS track. After all, these program …
Medicare is Still Behind on Telehealth
Medicare has long been criticized for its narrow restrictions on the coverage and reimbursement of telehealth services. A new report to Congress by the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) shows that not much has changed over the years. Mandated by the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act, the GAO report noted that Medicare and the US Department of Defense (DoD) trailed the Veterans Affairs (VA) system in their use of telehealth and remote patient monitoring (RPM). On the other hand, the report painted an optimistic picture of Medicare demonstrations and new care delivery models that, it said, might increase the use of telehealth in Medicare. But Gary Capistrant, chief policy …
Paper-Based Billing is Ancient History in Healthcare
“Today’s realities are that managing a practice is more complicated than ever…” That’s how an assessment begins on what it takes to successfully run a medical group in 2017 by Triple Tree, a merchant bank focused on healthcare. In a recent report, the bank also looked at the forces driving mergers of specialty groups. Chief among them is the realization by administrators and their physicians that the healthcare business isn’t what they hoped it would be. The mounting pressures are affecting medical groups’ top and bottom lines. The bank’s report suggests that while opting to be part of a larger group might sound attractive to an independent practice, the non-clinical …
14 things to know about medical coding
Medical coders play a crucial role in the revenue cycle process, as they help ensure health systems, hospitals and physicians are properly reimbursed for the services they provide. Here are 14 things to know about medical coding. 1. AAPC describes medical coding as “the transformation of healthcare diagnosis, procedures, medical services and equipment into universal medical alphanumeric codes.” 2. Once medical coding professionals assign a code to a specific healthcare service or procedure, the code is included on an insurance claim, according to AAPC. This code tells the insurer how much it owes for the care and helps determine how much the patient will be billed. 3. Coders use a …
ICD-11 Beta is available in the trials at WHO
If you are tired of ICD-10, you can go checkout ICD-11 at WHO’s website. ICD-11 Beta is available in the trial stages. Visit the current version of ICD-11 on the World Health Organization website
5 biggest concerns for health execs in 2017
A new set of concerns has emerged among hospital and health system executives, according to The Advisory Board Company’s latest Annual Health Care CEO Survey. The survey, which was completed by 183 C-suite executives between December and January, found the No. 1 concern among health system leaders in 2017 is improving patients’ access to care in ambulatory or outpatient settings. Last year, this concern was ranked No. 6. An entirely new concern — finding innovative ways to lower expenses — came in at second place. The No. 3 concern was boosting market share for outpatient surgical procedures, up from No. 10 in 2016. “This shift in topic rankings reflects a …
Self-service data preparation and analytics
Improving claim collection rates is one way to boost revenue cycle performance, and hospitals can achieve this through various means. Frank Moreno, vice president of product marketing at Datawatch, shared the following tip with Becker’s Hospital Review:”Effective revenue cycle management is only attainable when healthcare organizations have a full view of their patient and operational data. Finance departments cannot wait for IT to provide detailed reports, or spend countless hours manually pulling data from EMRs, 835 and 837 remittance and other files.Yet that’s what is happening at organizations across the country every day. Instead, by using self-service data preparation and analytics solutions, finance teams can easily unlock hidden data to …
