SUMMARY OF EVENTS

As we continue to move our patient encounters through the revenue cycle at rates commensurate with historical claims processing benchmarks, we continue to celebrate the receipt of payment on our earliest discharges of the “new era”. These payments are exclusively being remitted by Medicare, an expedient, if not the most lucrative of our payers. While we anxiously await the first commercial third party payment, the ICD-10 project moves into its next phase, that being to monitor the efficacy of those payment outcomes as well as the continuing to evolve our clinical documentation into an asset for the organization. As calls and inquiries to the ICD-10 Support Center begin to wane, its operating hours have been dialed back and updates will move to a weekly and/or bi-weekly basis. An ongoing summary of the project is listed below and the full presentation can be found here.

 

OVERALL IMPACT

Financial and operating metrics continue to remain stable as Support Center efforts prevent ICD-10 related issues from funneling back to the operation.  Providers are demonstrating an uptick in their interaction with the new Allscripts documentation assistance tool, ICDx.  Documentation Improvement specialists in HIM continue to generate increased volumes of provider inquiries in an effort to take advantage of the specificity available in ICD-10.  Coding production has remained solid despite the transition to the new code set.  Unbilled receivables are trending up due primarily to reporting format issues as opposed to actual data deficiencies. Payments continue to funnel in on our earliest discharges, exclusively from Medicare.

 

ITEMS BEING RESOLVED

A reporting issue in the billing system has artificially increased the unbilled receivable for the past two days. A remedy has been provided and should clear the majority of the increase by Monday, October 19. A separate issue related to inpatient admissions being converted back to ED is being researched. The Allscripts team continues to research an outstanding item related to ICDx and the entry of psychiatry diagnoses. An updated implementation issues log can be found here.

 

SUPPORT CENTER ACTIVITY

The ICD-10 Support Center received 1 phone call and 1 e-mail inquiry and largely completing the re-coding of outstanding and erroneously coded outpatient encounters. Inflow is predominantly related to previously scheduled visits in which patients were pre-registered with ICD-9 codes prior to October 1, 2015. In total, the Support Center has logged 99 issues and 18 remain open. Support Center staff will be preparing materials to present on Thursday, October 29 to finalize transition of these activities back to the operation. Reference materials and other educational aids continue to be produced and disseminated to the organization. The ICD-10 AnTENna website recorded an additional 106 hits.

 

REMEMBER

• ICD-10 Diagnosis Codes are 3 – 7 characters, alpha-numeric, and ALWAYS begin with a letter
• ICD-10 is date of service/date of discharge sensitive
• DO NOT insert decimal points when entering ICD-10 diagnosis codes in Eagle
• Use ICDx to assist with documentation efforts in Sunrise Clinical Manager (SCM)
• Correct old health issues by clicking the health issue, selecting ‘update preferred mapping, select the ICD-10 code, and clicking ‘Accept”
• Ambulatory encounters scheduled prior to October 1, 2015 that included ICD-9 diagnosis codes will have to be manually corrected by converting the code to ICD-10 upon arrival.

 

HELP

For continued assistance and inquiry, please call the ICD-10 Support Center at 646-NYP-9-2-10 (646-697-9210), e-mail ICD-10Help@nyp.org, or visit the ICD-10 AnTENna website.