Coding properly and efficiently can have a profound effect on practice viability. ICD-10’s many changes, both ongoing and planned, have many physicians, coders and practice administrators confused, especially as the changes relate to clinical documentation improvement. To address this issue, a pre-symposium course on documentation and coding will be held in conjunction with the ACR’s State-of-the-Art Clinical Symposium on Friday, April 28, in Chicago.
“With so many changes in documentation and audit requests, the ACR wants to make sure our members are truly up to date,” says Antanya A. Chung, CPC, CPC-I, CRHC, CCP, the ACR’s director of practice management. “Practices need to know payer requirements to get staff and physicians up to speed. This course will encompass many of the things seen in day-to-day practice and will provide attendees with the key elements to reach the highest level of specificity and quality documentation.”
Course Focus Points
One key focus will be on the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Comprehensive Error Rate Testing (CERT) program. This will address the CMS’s selection process for reviewing claims and how to identify the trends that are driving coding errors.
Implementation of the Medicare Access and Chip Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA) began this year, so the changes it mandates for coding and documentation will also be discussed. MACRA introduces the Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS), which will require accurate, specific and complete diagnosis documentation. Physicians will need to be more judicious in establishing a clinical documentation improvement process in their practice and work with documentation and coding experts to improve overall documentation.
“We want our physicians, coders and practice administrators to understand all that is required from a practice by these programs,” says Ms. Chung, “and what their practices should be doing now.”
Course Information
The Clinical Documentation & Coding Boot Camp will be held Friday, April 28, at the Sheraton Grand Chicago Hotel from 9 a.m.–5:00 p.m., with lunch provided. Registration information is available here.
“Rheumatology often deals with systemic issues that require a continuous story of your patients,” says Ms. Chung. “We hope to fill in the blanks and help our members tell each story in a practical, time-efficient way and reach the highest level of specificity required by payers in this complex world of physician reimbursement.”
Kurt Ullman has been a freelance writer for more than 30 years and has written more than 600 articles for both professional and consumer audiences.
