CMS released a new interim final rule with comment period that grants organizations another round of flexibilities to meet the challenges of the COVID-19 public health emergency, including permitting hospitals to bill for telehealth services and loosening restrictions on COVID-19 testing.
Clinical validation reviews and queries ensure that the documented diagnoses and clinical indicators hold up to inspection. Use these strategies to head off clinical validation reviews and improve documentation.
With the release of a new ICD-10-CM code for the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), hospitals now have a method to capture and report this critical disease. Although the code itself is relatively straightforward and likely won’t stir up confusion the way coding for complex diagnoses (such as sepsis) does, correctly documenting and coding COVID-19 is crucial to turning the tide on the national public health emergency.
Like other services covered by Medicare, observation must be reasonable and necessary or, in other words, medically necessary. The physician must document that they assessed patient risk to determine that the patient would benefit from observation services.
Sepsis hospitalizations are on the rise and cost Medicare more than $40 billion in 2018, according to a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) study.
