On February 23, 2016, the Journal of the American Medical Association published new clinical definitions for sepsis and septic shock, dubbed “Sepsis-3.” In the three years since then, a host of analyses and conflicting documentation and coding requirements have caused not only consternation but...Read More »
by Rachelle Musselman, BSN, RN, Jorde Spitler, BSN, RN, Daniel Lantis, BSN, RN, Joseph E. Ross, MD, and Thomas A. Taghon, DO, MHA
When a condition is ill defined and documented by a provider, it renders the CDI specialist, and later the coding professional, unable to capture the...Read More »
Q: We recently had a patient who was admitted with sepsis and the physician documented sepsis, a urinary tract infection (UTI) related to chronic Foley catheter, and pneumonia. Can we code sepsis first instead of the complication code? Or is the complication always first? ...Read More »
by Julian Everett, RN, BSN, CDIP
Sepsis affects more than 1.7 million adults in the United States each year, and it’s estimated to occur among U.S. children at a rate of 158.7 cases per 100,000 children. Sepsis is the 10th leading cause of death among children in the United States...Read More »
According to the 2018 CDI Week Industry Survey, which included an extended section on CDI staffing practices, only 36.56% of respondents said they had HIM/ coding backgrounds represented in their CDI departments. Further, 77.55% of survey respondents said that their organization had a written...Read More »
by Sarah Nehring, CCS, CCDS
The last thing a query writer wants is to provoke a defensive response, but in the current healthcare environment, with denials on the rise, CDI specialists, as well as clinical and coding staff need to think defensively. Here are five things to...Read More »
By Sharme Brodie, RN, CCDS
The American Hospital Association (AHA) Coding Clinic, Second Quarter 2019, will likely make most CDI professionals breathe a sigh of relief as it’s a brief 40 pages in length—welcome news in light of the 2,000-plus-page fiscal year 2020...Read More »
Parkinson’s disease was first described by James Parkinson in 1817. It is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects almost 1 million Americans with about 60,000 new cases diagnosed every year. Onset usually occurs past the age of 60;...Read More »
