By Sharme Brodie, RN, CCDS
The First Quarter 2019 issue of Coding Clinic was released in late March and is rather short—just 37 pages. Because of the length, I want to spend more time than I otherwise would discussing a few covered procedures.
A recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association found that using population health data could help identify patients with a high...Read More »
Keeping up with evolving CDI and coding expectations can be a challenge, especially in the wake of the holiday hubbub. Start 2019 off in the know with this free webinar covering key highlights from the fourth quarter 2018 edition of Coding Clinic for ICD-10-CM and ICD-10-PCS.Read More »
Let’s take a moment to talk about unspecified pneumonia validation. In certain circumstances a pneumonia can be validated even in the absence of a chest x-ray revealing an acute pulmonary infiltrate, for example, it may be absent on admission in...Read More »
Q: I’m a bit confused by sepsis sequencing. Should it always be coded as the principal diagnosis, or are there instances where it wouldn’t be principal?
A: If sepsis is present on admission (POA), sepsis (the systemic illness) is coded first, followed by...Read More »
By Stephen Houlahan, RN, MSN, MBA, CCDS
The future of aortic valve replacement (AVR) is here, and it is called trans AVR (TAVR). Also known as trans-aortic valve implantation (TAVI), TAVR has been commercially available in Europe since 2007 and in the United States since 2011. It...Read More »
by Trey La Charité, MD, FACP, SFHM, CCS, CCDS
Recovery Auditor (RA) denials raise my blood pressure more than anything else (except maybe the postal service and the IRS). The constantly increasing number of clinical validation denials are repeated attacks against my hospital and...Read More »
