In a concerted effort to move healthcare payments to a system of "quality over quantity," CMS finalized policies that greatly expanded packaging for outpatient providers in the 2015 OPPS final rule. It also introduced complexity adjustments with comprehensive APCs (C-APCs).
More than ever before, HIM is being recognized as an enterprise profession important to ambulatory, acute, and postacute settings. A good example of the transformation is HIM's involvement in CMS' risk adjustment and Hierarchical Condition Category coding system.
Coding and documentation should tell a patient's complete story. With the greater specificity in ICD-10, organizations should be better able to capture these stories, and the respiratory codes, listed in Chapter 10: Diseases of the Respiratory System (J00?J99), are no exception.
