Don’t miss this opportunity to take credit for your patient’s improvement.
When you select the wrong answer to M1860 — Ambulation/Locomotion, your agency suffers on three levels. Be careful you’re not:
1. Robbing your agency of the ability to show patient improvement. Don’t make a guess at your patient’s ability, says Annette Lee, RN, MS, HCS-D, COS-C, AHIMA ICD-10 Trainer with Redmond, Wash.-based OASIS Answers. If your patient is furniture surfing or unsteady, get therapy out there, she says. If your patient starts out as a “3” because she needs a device she doesn’t have, you have an opportunity. If you can get her a walker and teach her to use it safely with less than continuous assistance, you can move her from a “3” to a “2,” Lee says.
2. Leaving money on the table. There are two payment levels for this item, Lee says. Responses 1-3 (ambulators, except response “0”) earns a nominal level of functional points. But responses “4” and higher earn additional points, she says.
3. Missing out on additional points. If the patient has a CVA or MS diagnosis and is chairfast or bedfast, or he has a pulmonary diagnosis and scores 1-6 for M1860, there is an additional opportunity for more points, Lee says.
