Talk Ten Tuesdays

The next big milestone for ICD-10 is the 2018 Coordination and Maintenance Committee meeting in Baltimore. The two-day meeting covered the latest requests for diagnosis and procedure codes. Monitoring and reporting on the meeting during this edition of Talk Ten Tuesdays will be Laurie Johnson, senior healthcare consultant for Revenue Cycle Solutions, LLC and an ICD10monitor contributor. Other segm...

Questions are overflowing about the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS’s) proposed changes to evaluation and management (E&M) coding and reimbursement found inside the proposed 2019 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule. Returning this coming Tuesday for the next edition of Talk Ten Tuesdays will be Sally Streiber, president of Practical Coding Solutions, LLC. Sally is expected to an...

Backlash continues over the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) proposed changes to evaluation and management (E&M) coding and reimbursement found inside the proposed 2019 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule. But it’s not all bad news. On this edition of Talk Ten Tuesdays, when Sally Streiber, president of Practical Coding Solutions, LLC, returns to the broadcast and launch part one...

Nearly 30 days ago, we posed the question “Are HIM Coding Professionals Qualified to Query for Clinical Validity?” leading up to the July 17 edition of Talk Ten Tuesdays, and the responses continue to roll in, nearly unabated. Specifically, we asked at that time, “are seasoned coding professionals competent or trained well enough to interpret clinical terms and concepts from the medical record?” A...

There is a lot of buzz out in the industry about ICD-11, especially since the World Health Organization (WHO) released the new code set in June as first reported by ICD10monitor and Talk Ten Tuesday. Nevertheless, ICD-11 is a trending topic—a topic we will explore during this edition of Talk Ten Tuesdays. That’s when nationally recognized coding authority Rhonda Buckholtz will report on the need t...

Back in February, as reported by ICD10monitor, the American Hospital Association (AHA) changed coding rules, allowing case managers and social workers to assign Z codes—one of 88 assignable ICD-10 codes to report on claims for homelessness, low income, stressful work environment, low literacy, divorce, personal history of abuse, and many more. But not all healthcare professionals—including a numbe...

Coding guidelines and advice are taking bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) to a surgical DRG. Should the body part be the bronchus or the lung? Reporting our lead story is Erica Remer, MD and Inpatient Compliance Specialist Stacey Elliott. Both will discuss their concerns. Other segments to be featured on the broadcast include: Talk Ten Tuesdays News Desk : Timothy Powell, a nationally recognized expert...

Are seasoned coding professionals competent or trained well enough to interpret clinical terms and concepts from the medical record? Although they have been doing so for decades, the question continues to remain contentious. Reporting our lead story during this edition of Talk Ten Tuesdays will be Debra Beisel Denton, who works at Maricopa Integrated Health System as the health information managem...

Fast, convenient, and cutting-edge, the new trend of text-messaging medical orders is being met with mixed results. Some favor the ease and speed, while others are concerned that it could comprise patient safety while not accurately documenting patient care. Reporting our lead story during the next edition of Talk Ten Tuesdays  will be Rose Dunn, chief operations officer for First Class Solutions....

ICD-11 codes are becoming healthcare’s new reality since the new code set was released this week by the World Health Organization (WHO) and reported on by ICD10monitor. And already important questions are emerging. Will it be possible to have a paper ICD-11 book? Will there be more electronic tools available to assist with understanding the new classification? These and other topics are covered by...

In the era of #metoo, a new national study – “Sexual Harassment of Physicians Report 2018” – was published this week by Medscape, reporting that more than 10 percent of female physicians have experienced workplace sexual harassment.  Continuing its reporting on women’s health issues, and in particular gender wage disparity, Talk Ten Tuesdays will delve into this topical social issue that has until...

University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) is a world-renowned healthcare provider and insurer based in Pittsburgh, Penn. With more than 30 academic, community, and specialty hospitals, 600 doctors’ offices in outpatient sites, and more than 4,600 physicians, operating an array of rehabilitation, retirement, and long-term care facilities, UPMC relies on technology to help enhance its coding an...

There are 78,881 ICD-10-PCS codes for fiscal year 2019. Of these there will be 392 new codes; eight revision titles; and 216 deleted codes, according to nationally recognized coding authority Gloryanne Bryant, who reports our lead story during this episode. The files, recently released by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), and first reported by ICD10monitor, contain informatio...

Smoldering below the surface is burnout, and it’s taking a toll on physicians. With increasingly high rates of reported physician suicides and an alarming decline in the volume of medical school applications, this situation could be the nation’s next healthcare crisis. The good news: A study published in April’s World Journal of Urology reported that using scribes in a urology practice significant...

Whether it’s discussing equal pay for women healthcare professionals, uncovering #MeToo narratives in the medical profession, or examining studies comparing women physicians’ and surgeons’ outcomes favorably to men’s, there has never been a more important time for crucial conversations to take place about women’s health. And that is why National Women’s Health Week will be the subject of this spec...

If there is no chief complaint, or no acute or chronic condition, auditors may not even continue with the record and negate its value altogether, according to nationally recognized coding and documentation authority Terry Fletcher, who is currently uncovering errors in an ongoing review of more than 1,000 records. During the next edition of Talk Ten Tuesdays, she will share her findings in the sec...

Not wishing to disappoint, the 2019 Medicare Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS) proposed rule, released on Tuesday, has something for everyone. For coders and clinical documentation integrity specialists (CDISs), there are proposed new codes and tweaks to the MS-DRG methodology as well as changes in New Technology add-on payments. Laurie Johnson, senior healthcare consultant for Revenue C...

It's auditing season, and nationally recognized coding and documentation authority Terry Fletcher will be reporting on errors she is uncovering in a review of more than 1,000 records. During this episode, she shares her findings in the first of a four-part series on auditing issues in physician documentation. While maintaining that CPT® and ICD-10 coding does become less risky when documentat...

Are you hearing more about risk adjustment methodologies and Hierarchical Condition Categories (HCCs)? No doubt you are. That's because they impact coding, clinical documentation integrity activities and reimbursement. So what impact can  you  have on any of these issues? During this episode Marie A. Morin, director at Alvarez and Marsal Healthcare Industry Group LLC, reports on her experienc...

The recent Doximity research study that revealed an average national wage gap between male and female physicians of $105,000 was greeted by some healthcare professionals as "old news," while to others it seemed one more thread in the national fabric of the discussion on women's rights in the era of #metoo. Yet this income disparity could also contribute to physician burnout—a diagno...

Maligned and misunderstood, the Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) is under assault, as industry experts are urging officials at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to consider repealing the program. Yet March 31 was when eligible clinicians were to submit their quality data by for the value-based reimbursement program. Delivering an update on MIPS during this episode i...

Medicare beneficiaries will soon be receiving from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) new identification cards—cards that will use a unique and what CMS describes as a "randomly-assigned number" called a Medicare Beneficiary Identifier (MBI). The new number replaces the Social Security-based Health Insurance Claim Number (HICN). The new cards, scheduled to be mailed n...

We will continue to focus on cardiology during this episode, as Jeffrey E. Epstein, MD, FACPA, appears as a special guest along with Glenn Krauss. Together the pair co-authored a paper titled "Physician Documentation Impacts Hospital Mortality Rates for Acute Myocardial Infarctions." Dr. Epstein reports on the need for better physician documentation to achieve better clinical outcomes –...

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) continues to be a challenge to code and document – its coding in particular, and its sequencing, can be difficult. As a medical diagnosis, COPD is one of the most frequently searched terms on the Internet. Shedding light on this subject during this episode of Talk Ten Tuesdays is Nelly Leon-Chisen, the director of coding and classification for the Ameri...

The federal ICD-10 Coordination and Maintenance Committee (C&M) is scheduled to meet Tuesday and Wednesday, March 6 and 7, to discuss proposals for diagnosis code topics, with the conversation to be led by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Join Chuck Buck and Erica Remer, MD during this episode, as coding educator and consultant Laurie Johnson reports on the ongoing deliber...