Meet the Author Greg Balasus
Client Profile:
231-bed acute care medical center
Challenge:
In preparation for the conversion to ICD-10, the medical center elected to convert inpatient, outpatient and emergency services coding to a vendor-developed computer-assisted coding (CAC) system.
The goals of the conversion included not adding coders to cover the anticipated increase in coding work load stemming from ICD-10 and maintaining current strong clinical and financial performance indicators directly linked to coding. The strain on coding and information technology resources already committed to the ICD-10 preparation project made this already complex project particularly challenging. i3 was currently engaged by the medical center as project management (PM) for ICD-10, so the expansion of services to PM the CAC was a natural progression. The medical center and i3 inventoried all documents necessary for coding and mapped them into the CAC (essentially transferring the entire EHR into the CAC), completed extensive testing and corrections, completed extensive management and staff training, launched a successful go live ahead of ICD-10 implementation date and then monitored results continuously improving the CAC's ability to accurately code accounts with minimal coder corrections required.
Results:
The success implementation of the CAC resulted in the following:
- No additional coders were required to support ICD-10 coding
- External coding services were not engaged
- Resulted in a decreasing trend in the volume of codes suggested by the CAC requiring coder revision
- All clinical and financial indicators stemming from coding were maintained to, and in some cases improved beyond, ICD-9 levels