Medicare Compliance & Reimbursement

Hint: When in doubt, check with the practitioners rather than guessing. For most coders, not a day passes when you don'tencounter at least one or two acronyms in medical charts. Whether or not you know what they mean could be the difference between coding accurately and getting the codes way off-base. While there are quite a few acronyms that all coders should know, there are also some that practices should never use. The Joint Commission includes an official "Do Not Use" list on its Web site (www.jointcommission.org). Among the abbreviations you should not use are "U" when referring to the word "unit" -- instead, you should write out the word "unit." Good practice: If you see an acronym that you don't recognize, ask the practitioner to decipher it for you rather than attempting to guess at its answer. If the patient is sent to your practice from another office, you [...]