After my audio program last week, there is always a persistent question: “If I choose a code first before I document, coudn’t that be dangerous?”
Well, it’s a polite question that is really saying…”Isn’t this fraud?”
It’s not, and here’s why.
The three key components of an E/M code are:
History
Physical
Medical Decision Making, (MDM)
Two out of the three key […]
The EMR movement has been touted to promote savings in healthcare dollars by eliminating redundant care with access to records, a way to compare performance of healthcare by standardization and uniformity, and with a seamless network to share data nationwide, despite ongoing concerns about privacy and who will have access (authorized and unauthorized), and for […]
There are different “languages of healthcare.†Clinicians speak patient language but often don’t speak the healthcare language of regulation, quality, or finance. It pays to understand and effectively translate from one dialect to another. For instance, “medical necessity†may sound “clinical†but it’s really financial. For CMS, “medical necessity†doesn’t mean something that’s “medically necessary,†[…]
Do you remember when HCFA, (a.k.a. CMS), released new documentation guidelines about ten years ago…. And then a few years later released “new†guidelines but promised to eventually release a totally revamped version… but you’ve been puzzled why that, frankly, never materialized? Well, it turns out the reason they’ve taken so long in “updating†those […]
