The first two years of the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA) Quality Payment Program (QPP) are in the books and many organizations are wondering if their strong performances will ever be met with a significant upside adjustment.
Year 1 (2017) enjoyed very high participation levels, 95% of eligible clinicians, but very low upside adjustments. Between the Test Pace option, artificially low bar (3 points) for an upside adjustment, and numerous opportunities to score
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Video: How to Fill Coding Documentation Gaps When Converting to ICD-10
Here is a recent ICD-10 Summit Wrap up video interview with Mary Stanfill, MBI, RHIA, CCS, CCS-P, FAHIMA, vice president of HIM consulting services at UASI talks about coding documentation gaps and the best ways to fill them in converting to ICD-10. Stanfill provides the following tips on addressing coding documentation gaps: Identifying high risk areas suchas surgical procedures for amputations must be coded as mid, high, or low in order code the case
Improve physician/clinician
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7 Tips to Get Physicians On Board with ICD-10
Written by Deborah Robb, BSHA, CPC, Physician Management Consultant for TrustHCS: The American Medical Association, not satisfied with HHS’s push-back of the ICD-10 deadline to October 1, 2014, has protested again. Perhaps one of the reasons for their continued dissent is lack of guidance and support. While much has been published about the implementation of ICD-10 for hospitals,
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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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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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CMS Announces Re-Examination of Timeline for ICD-10 – Is the Pressure Off?
The following is a guest post from Doug Hires, Partner, Consulting & Advisory Services at Santa Rosa Consulting, Inc. on the possible ICD-10 timeline delay. Many of you have likely read or heard this week that the acting CMS Administrator, Marilyn Tavenner, announced to the press following an AMA Advocacy Conference that CMS will "re-examine the timeframe" through a rulemaking process. She did not say when that rulemaking process will begin but said that CMS would send details about the
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Race to the ICD-10 Finish Line Infographic
Infographic highlighting that ICD-10 is almost two Years Away and healthcare organizations must have a plan in order to race to the ICD-10 Finish Line
*Update: CMS has officially delayed ICD-10 to October 1, 2014 With the AMA writing yet another letter, this time to the HHS in hopes of stopping ICD-10. There are no current plans to stop ICD-10 implementation; therefore, with less than one year away, healthcare providers must race to meet the 10/1/13 compliance date. The following
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