by Trey La Charité, MD, FACP, CCDS
Your CDI program successfully obtained consistent results over the last few years, and all is right within the CDI world. Then, the facility case-mix index (CMI) unexpectedly drops. Provided it rebounds, one or two months below its usual average...Read More »
A physician admits a patient with dementia, yet provides no further definitive diagnosis. The CDI specialist recognizes the scenario as similar to a case reviewed the week before, so she reaches out to the case management (CM) team to see whether they have additional insight. The CDI...Read More »
CMS continues to transition from volume-based to value-based payments and Alternative Payment Models (APM), including bundled payment models, with the goal to have 30% of its payments tied to APMs by 2016 and 50% by 2018. In 2011, CMS sought out providers to test four broadly defined bundled...Read More »
by Valerie Bica, BSN, RN
Providers often document “global devel dopmental delays” in pediatric charts. The phrase is used to describe when a child takes longer to reach certain development milestones than other children the same age, such as walking or talking. Children with...Read More »
The advent of the electronic record (EHR) changed how CDI specialists work with providers and coders. Gone are the days of misplaced paper queries and handwriting woes. As more and more healthcare organizations take on the arduous process of implementing an EHR, new challenges and considerations...Read More »
The Third International Consensus Definitions for Sepsis and Sep- tic Shock published new clinical guidelines for diagnosing sepsis, dubbed Sepsis-3, earlier this year in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).
Although CMS chose not to adopt the new criteria in a...Read More »
The world didn’t end on October 1, 2015. After years of postponement, the proverbial “deal with the devil” made between CMS and the AMA to push ahead with ICD-10-CM/PCS implementation was a year’s grace period during which...Read More »
