Billing, Coding, and Documentation Flashcards
Functions of the medical record
- Historical vehicle that promotes excellence in care
- Faciliates care coordination
- Transcends communication barriers
- Financial, legal, and administrative functions
- Documentation for professional and facility fee reimbursement, quality and safety assessments
- Malpractice litigation and disability determinations
- Community-based care and public health initiatives
What is the purpose of computerized provider order entry?
- Replace paper based ordering systems
- Originally for improved safety of medication orders
- Now allows electronic ordering of tests, procedures, and consultations
- Maintain administration record
- Review changes to order by successive personnel
What are CPOE systems generally paired with? What is the purpose of this?
- Clinical Decision Support System
- Prevent errors at medication ordering and dispensing stages
- Improve safety
- Suggests default doses, routes of administration, and frequency
- May include drug safety features such as drug allergy checking or drug-drug, drug-laboratory interactions
- Some prevent errors of commission and omission
What are some unintended consequences of CPOE?
- Users often use workarounds to bypass safety features
- Excessive and nonspecific warnings can lead to alert fatigue, users ignore even critical warnings
- More or new work for clinicians
- Unfavorable workflow
- Never-ending system demands
- Problems related to persistence of paper orders
- Unfavorable changes in communication patterns and practices
- Negative feelings toward new technology
- Generation of new types of errors
- Unexpected changes in institution’s power structure, organizational culture, or professional roles
- Overdependence on technology
What are advantages to written patient records?
No computer delay
What are disadvantags to written patient records?
- Penmanship and misunderstanding of wording
What are templated notes?
- Preprinted paper progress notes with check boxes or electronically constructed click boxes
- Appropriate documentation tools
- Enhance legibility and facilitate efficient documentation
What is one con of templated notes?
- Cut and past errors
How do you avoid cut and paste errors
- Make each note specific to the patient on that encounter date
- Modify information and language brought forward from any previous encounters so current documentation demonstrates distinct clinical service of today
- Do not include excessive data or repetitious information that is not relevant to current service
How does medicare pay for inpatient services?
Using inpatient prospective payment system, which relies primarily on diagnosis in order to group the services delivered to an inpatient into a medicare severity-adjusted diagnosis related group
Some non-medicare payers still reimburse hospitals and facilities with a fixed payment for each day, commonly described as a per diem rate
What is the most common system used to report provider services?
American Medical Association Current Procedural Terminology
* Lists descriptive terms and identifying codes to report medical services and procedures
* Provides uniform language to accurately describe all medical, surgical, and diagnostic services and procedures
What are the 3 key components of selection of an evaluation and management level
- History
- PE
- Medical Decision Making
- Time considered a fourth component but only affects E/M when counseling and/or coordination of care dominate more than 50% of physician’s total visit time
Elements of history
- Chief complaint
- HPI
- ROS
- PFSHs
can all be included in narrative format, do not need to be separate bulleted segments
History
- Conveys information about CC, from either origin or interval between sequential patient encounters
- Eight elements: location, quality, severity, duration, timing, context, modifying factors, and associated signs/symptoms
- Quantified as brief (one to three elements) or extended (four or more elements)
chief complaint
- Reason for visit in patients own words
- Always document in progress note, even absent an acute complaint ie pneumonia follow up
ROS
- Fourteen systems: constitutional, eyes, ears/nose/mouth/throat, cardiovascular, respiratory, gastrointestinal, genitourinary, musculoskeletal, integumentary, neurologic, psychiatric, endocrine, hematologic/lymphatic, and allergic/immunologic
- Problem pertinent, extended, or complete
What is a problem pertinent ROS
- Documents one system
What is an extended ROS
Documentation of two to 9 systems
What is a complete ROS
10 or more individual systems
Components of past history
- Documentation of previous illnesses, hospitalizations, surgeries, medications, allergies, and immunizations
What is a pertinent PFSH
Comment in any one of the three histories
What is a complete PFSH
Comment in each history (ie past, family, and social)
How PFSH changed if obtained during a previous encounter?
Does not need to be rerecorded if provider documents review and updating of previous information
What happens if unable to obtain history from the patient?
- Record should describe patient’s condition or the circumstance that precludes obtaining a history, and what attempts the provider has made to obtain the information
What is considered complete PFSH if new patient encounter vs subsequent or ED encounters?
- New: need all 3
- Subsequent: need 2/3