Clinical Documentation

10 changes CMS made in 2021

By Eric Oliver for Becker’s Hospital Review With the new calendar year, several CMS changes took effect, with more on the way. Here’s a roundup of changes CMS made or will make in 2021: Removed 298 musculoskeletal-related services. By 2024, all 1,700 procedures on the inpatient-only list will be phased out, and will be allowed…

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25 statistics on medical coder salaries

By Laura Dyrda for Becker’s Hospital Review The average salary for medical coding professionals varies by location, practice setting and credential. The American Academy of Professional Coders conducts an annual survey to gather information about coder salary and publishes the report on its website. Here are 25 statistics about 2019 salaries, the most recent data available. By…

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Guest post: Counting COVID-19 cases

By Howard Rodenberg, MD, MPH, CCDS for ACDIS CDI Blog I sometimes drift through our office space—often deserted now in the era of COVID-19—and think about how the cubicles represent our spot in the healthcare industry. CDI occupies a single cubicle somewhere on the Revenue Cycle’s floor. It’s our own little niche, a “boutique practice”…

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Cover the Revenue Cycle From All Corners

By Susan Chapman for For the Record Health care organizations are increasingly adopting revenue integrity (RI) programs, which, as defined by the National Association of Healthcare Revenue Integrity, are valuable to “prevent recurrence of issues that can cause revenue leakage and/or compliance risks through effective, efficient, replicable processes and internal controls across the continuum of…

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Mayo Clinic CIO says AI has been key to understanding COVID-19

By Mike Miliard for Healthcare IT News In his opening keynote Tuesday at the HIMSS Machine Learning & AI for Healthcare Digital Summit, Mayo Clinic CIO Cris Ross enumerated some of the many ways artificial intelligence has been crucial to our evolving understanding of COVID-19. Way back in March, for instance, researchers were already using…

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Guest post: A letter to physicians from their CDI team

by Christine Donnamiller, RN, ACDIS-Approved CDI Apprentice for ACDIS CDI Blog I know it’s not easy. I see you documenting early in the morning, afternoon, and late in the evening. Somewhere in the middle you are holding that patient’s heart by speaking your words to him, speaking with the dying woman’s daughter, setting up home…

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A Tangled Mess

By Monique Griffin for For the Record From sequencing to recognizing manifestations, coding  for COVID-19 is no easy task. When the pandemic emerged, the World Health Organization (WHO), the American Medical Association (AMA), and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) scrambled to update codes for the diagnosis, testing, and tracking of COVID-19. Prior…

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Compensation for physician practice billers & coders — 9 survey insights

By Angie Stewart for Becker’s Hospital Review Nearly one-third of full-time billers and coders at physician practices make between $40,001 and $50,000 a year in direct monetary compensation, according to Physician’s Practice’s “2020 Staff Salary Survey.” The survey’s 295 respondents specified how much the average non-physician provider earns annually: Note: Percentages do not add up…

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AMA Announces New CPT Codes for Multivirus Tests to Detect COVID-19 and Flu

From For the Record The American Medical Association (AMA) recently published an update to the Current Procedural Terminology (CPT®) code set that includes new code additions and editorial revisions for reporting medical services sparked by the public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The update to the CPT code set was approved by the CPT…

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