External Causes, Passover and ICD10 All in One!

B'SD

24 Nisan, 5774

This is not your ordinary blogpost. I'm addressing some diverse topics, with a grin.

I've enjoyed a fun end to Passover/Pesakh, milling around a Mimouna festival in a local park, then listening to the lively music from my home.

I return to medical coding class today, after a week's vacation. I bet we'll have some fun coding this phenom (the psych code for "Dunderhead" must be a doozy!). 

Surgeons in India find 12 gold bars in man's stomach

The sad reality is that for all the pundits who maligned ICD10 and its "outlandish" external cause codes, this is a sad lesson in why such codes are increasingly necessary.

I remain optimistic that America's legislators can reverse medical and financial harm to the public by reinstating the October 2014 ICD10 implementation date. 

Responsible adults learn from their mistakes and correct them. 

They repair harm they have unintentionally - or intentionally - caused.

ICD10 coding is worth gold, well, more cash in the pockets of patients and medical facilities, that is. It can do far more good there than in some selfish guy's gut, no?





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Are there only 3 Options for Taking Advantage of the ICD10 Delay? Or 4?

B'SD

17 Nisan, 5774

Within the medical industry, there's an enduring debate about the merits and upside of the i10 delay. This one is entitled 3 ways providers can take advantage of the ICD-10 delay.

Dontcha just LUV this quote: 

"From a hospital perspective, enough already," Linda Reed, vice president and chief information officer at Morristown, N.J.-based Atlantic Health, told FierceHealthIT. "We've spent the money, done the work and started all the training. From a physician practice perspective, I'm not sure giving another year would make any difference in readiness. The extension from 2013 to 2014 didn't."

Those words made me think of two very different scenarios and the motivations behind them:

  1) Doomsday preppers who shuddered as the clock struck midnight on the last day of 1999... 

  2) The purpose of procrastination, and its inevitable result...

Neither scenario relates to productive results.

People tend to find out that they can cope with reality once they decide to deal with it. That tends to lead to better and better consequences.

Read the rest of the 3 Options story, 

http://www.fiercehealthcare.com/special-reports/3-ways-providers-can-take-advantage-icd-10-delay, 

then ask your legislators what they're doing to redress the ICD10 implementation delay.

By the way, I've identified a fourth option for taking advantage of the ICD10 delay: Learning from the mistake.

There's more good reading in 

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