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In 2015, himagine conducted its inaugural HIM Benchmark Survey in the midst of the preparation for ICD-10. At the time, approximately 56% of respondents reported that they planned to outsource at least a portion of their coding. In our 2016 survey, 63% of respondents indicated that they outsource, making it clear that most healthcare providers currently rely on some coding vendor resources and will likely continue to work with outsourced coders going forward.

In our soon to be released second annual HIM Benchmark Report, 70% of HIM leaders indicated they increased auditing efforts in 2016 and a whopping 96% projected to maintain or increase this level of auditing in 2017.

This week's post comes from National Compliance and Quality Audit Manager, Sharon Nichols, BSBEB, RHIT, CCS, CHTS-TR.

This week's post comes from National Compliance and Quality Audit Manager, Sharon Nichols, BSBEB, RHIT, CCS, CHTS-TR.

The next wave of the ICD-10 transition may help Organizations increase revenue through higher level of specificity in claim submission.  The key to this success is driven by continuous monitoring of coding accuracy.

In today’s shifting healthcare landscape, the evolving disciplines of HIM, clinical documentation improvement and healthcare informatics are merging.  The recent implementation of ICD-10 offers additional opportunities to further specify the patient’s condition that enhances provider communication as well as accurate reimbursement.  As risk base insurance models increase, many organizations are in the process of expanding their clinical documentation improvement efforts in order to drive optimized revenue and compliance.

The following information comes from the June 2016 issue of For the Record  magazine. 

As outsourcing models gain a foothold, health care organizations weigh the pros and cons.

Outsourced models are increasingly recognized as an attractive and viable option for a number of operational areas within health care organizations.  In line with this trend, many organizations are considering the potential of moving either some or all of the coding function to a third-party service provider.

Hello to everyone in ICD-10 land!  In my past blogs I have focused on the specialty specific areas of coding where confusion exists, but let's face it, a large part of what we code every day is in the area of General Surgery, which poses its own set of unique challenges.  So many guidelines and let’s not forget the selection of the root operation, body system, body part, device, biopsy and the list goes on.  I am a big advocate of getting back to the basics so let’s start there and review some starting points.

Over the last couple years coding has been influenced by the transition to ICD-10, Quality Indicators, and Data Analytics causing coding roles to change tremendously.  One aspect of change has been substantially increased email communication with other health information teams (CDI, QA, Case Management) related to clinical documentation and coding accuracy. 

Last month, we discussed OB/GYN coding as part of our ICD-10 Quick Tips blog series.  This week, we will continue our discussion of OB/GYN coding and focus on coding of multiple gestations.  In our past life (ICD-9!) we did not have too many options to capture this data, but ICD-10 certainly took care of that for us!  We now have new coding concepts to address and apply, so let’s take a look at one of the biggest changes involving multiple gestation coding.  Once again, I want to start with some basic information which is critical for understanding this concept of coding.