Note conservative Tx attempts before surgery option. The hip joint is a ball-and-socket joint formed by the joining of two bones — the “ball” is the knobby head of the thighbone, or femur, that fits into the “socket” – a [...]
Were you able to identify the right VAP code? Think you really know your postprocedural complications and disorders of respiratory system codes? See if your answers from the quiz questions on page 3 match up with the ones provided below. [...]
Question: A patient was admitted to the hospital with pneumonia due to streptococcus pneumoniae. The provider placed the patient on a ventilator to help improve their breathing. The patient then developed ventilator-associated pneumonia, which the provider documented. How do I sequence [...]
Learn this necessary trick for correctly coding aspiration pneumonia. You know to list “pneumonia” as an active diagnosis in Section I on the MDS if a resident’s medical record includes a recent X-ray indicating pneumonia. But do you know which [...]
Experts say a diagnosis is not enough, in and of itself. When you see a pneumonia diagnosis, you know there are more than 50 codes in the J12-J18.9 range. Are you doing the necessary sleuthing to find out what caused [...]
Your best bet is to nail down the cause of pneumonia first, experts say. When patients present to the ED and are diagnosed with pneumonia, your coding choices are vast, with over 50 codes in the J12-J18.9 range. However, the [...]
Know pneumonia’s cause before selecting a code, experts say. When should your pneumonia claim go beyond simply applying J18.9 (Pneumonia, unspecified organism)? Ideally, every time, coding experts say. That’s because if your physician’s notes simply say “pneumonia,” it’s not necessarily [...]
If you’re feeling the heat of state fraud scrutiny, you are not alone. Home health agencies had the third-most open fraud investigations with Medicaid Fraud Control Units in 2020 at 804, the HHS Office of Inspector General says in a [...]
Key: Was ob-gyn monitoring the pregnancy? Do you know whether you should include or exclude a visit from the global ob package (59400-59622)? Find out with this seven-part coding challenge. Decide If Visit is Outside Global Ob Situation 1: The [...]
About 25 percent of the nation’s agencies will eventually be under RCD. If you’re one of the approximately 1,500 HHAs that will start the Review Choice Demonstration in the next four months, you should learn a lesson from the pioneering [...]
