I recently heard of a local long-term care hospital (LTCH, also known as LTACH) that was unwilling to accept military veterans who were cared for at her facility or any Veterans Affairs hospitals even though they would otherwise qualify for LTCH care. The reason the LTCH would not accept these patients was because they did not have a preceding visit in a “regular” hospital. What's the solution?
Q: In our pharmacy dispensing system, we can enter free-form notes for certain records such as a patient record, prescription records, and physician records. This field is used to enter notes that are customer service?focused and not treatment- or payment-related in nature. Would these notes be considered PHI, and would record retention requirements apply to these notes?
The May 2016 issue of Perspectives outlined 225 hospital requirements from the accreditation manual?nine from the Information Management (IM) chapter and five from the Record of Care, Treatment and Services (RC) chapter?that have been deleted. This initiative is part of the Joint Commission's project REFRESH and improving the survey process.
One year following the official implementation of ICD-10, the coding industry is beginning to report valid results regarding accuracy, productivity, and denial trends. While some of these facts and figures are self-reported by HIM directors and anecdotal in nature, other findings are grounded in hard, fast coding performance data. Such is the case with the results from Central Learning (www.centrallearning.com), a web-based system that electronically assesses coder knowledge using real medical record cases and expert-verified answer keys.
This article summarizes coder performance data as measured across 50 health systems and 300 coders as of June 30, 2016. It compares these findings with other industry reports and extrapolates key findings for HIM directors and revenue cycle executives. Since coding and diagnosis-related group (DRG) assignment are the major drivers behind health system revenue streams, consistent data analysis helps to ensure accurate coding and reimbursement.
According to Central Learning data, coding accuracy is slightly increasing after nine months under ICD-10 for both experienced coders and coders-in-training. While the industry overall still lags behind the 95% accuracy benchmark achieved in ICD-9, we're getting closer in all three major patient types: inpatient, outpatient, and emergency services.
Fifty health systems are represented in the data, providing a broad-based assessment. We compared coder accuracy from Q1 (January 1?March 31) with Q2 (April 1?June 30) to identify recent, timely trends in code quality. The figure on p. 13 lists the most current benchmark of our status through June 30, 2016.
The May 2016 issue of Perspectives outlined 225 hospital requirements from the accreditation manual?nine from the Information Management (IM) chapter and five from the Record of Care, Treatment and Services (RC) chapter?that have been deleted. This initiative is part of the Joint Commission's project REFRESH and improving the survey process.
