Written by Dr. Peter Johnson, Co-Founder/Chief Terminology Director from Clinithink
Statisticians have been collecting and classifying causes of disease for hundreds of years. In fact, the well-known ICD system started as a classification of causes of death in 1855. Since then, the focus has shifted to include classifying all aspects of care for many different purposes – from billing to early disease warnings, epidemiology, health care planning and point-of-care decision support.
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Healthcare Policy Regulation & Reform | News, Analysis, Insights - HIT Consultant
Video:3M Discusses Partnership with Nuance Healthcare Solutions
Video interview with Richard Woliniewicz, Ph.D, Director NLP Advanced Technology at 3M HIS speaking during HIMSS12 about 3M's strategic partnership with Nuance Healthcare solutions
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News:ICD-9 Code Freeze Extended 1 Year
Pat Brooks, RHIA, Sr. Technical Advisor at the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced today during this week's ICD-10 Summit that the ICD-9 code freeze, orginally scheduled for October, 1 2014 will be extended one year
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Pre-Reform Impact of Self-Pay Patients on US Hospitals
Pre-reform, many hospitals experience significant uncompensated care costs from self-pay patients. The following infographic from Objective Health illustrates the variation in self-pay uncompensated care costs across US hospitals and regions.
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Physician-Patient-Communication Infographic
From Verilogue's collection of over 70,000 physician-patient communication comes a new infographic depicting the communication statistics of patients, caregivers and their physicians.
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Importance of Healthcare Providers Improving Their CDI Program
Guest post from Alice Zentner, Director of Auditing and Education for TrustHCS:
Many providers have CDI programs. The belief is that more accurate, detailed clinical documentation is better for the patient, the institution, the government, researchers, and all aspects of quality of care. So why not have an improvement program for the improvement program?
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Video:Understanding NLP Technology with 3M
Imminent delay of ICD-10 has not stopped the healthcare providers who have the foresight to charge ahead in their preparation for ICD-10. One of the biggest components that would assist healthcare organizations in that preparation for ICD-10 is purchasing a Computer Assisted Coding software product. One of the key components of a computer assisted coding product is it's Natural Language Processing (NLP) technology that provides the ability to highlight code-able terms in the patient record by
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5 ICD-10 Steps that Deliver Collateral Benefit for ICD-9
Guest post from Torrey Barnhouse, CEO of TrustHCS providing 5 ICD-10 steps that can deliver collateral benefit for ICD-9
While at HIMSS 2012, TrustHCS had the honor of sponsoring an executive roundtable on ICD-10. During the roundtable, speakers discussed five ICD-10 projects that should be continued, full steam ahead, despite the delay. It’s a good list and worth sharing.
In general, the panel’s advice was to identify ICD-10 tasks that have collateral benefit for ICD-9 coding. These are
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HHS Issues Final Rule on State Health Insurance Exchanges
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius today published the final rule that will assist states in building more affordable health insurance exchanges. Beginning in 2014, one stop marketplaces called Exchanges will be operational, enabling consumers and small business to select a private health insurance plan and offer the public the same kinds of insurance choices as members of Congress.
The exchanges will help level the playing field and drive down costs with health insurers
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Seniors are Losing Billions of Dollars Buried in Unused Benefits from Medicare and Other Agencies
Guest post by Peggy Gavan
According to a report released by the National Council on Aging (NCOA) and National Association of Area Agencies on Aging (n4a), millions of low-income older adults are missing out on over $20 billion in free and low-cost support that could help pay for health care, prescriptions, food, and utilities. The main reason why seniors are not taking advantage of these resources? They simply don’t know the money is there for them.
In response to this disconnect, the
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