Posts by Brian.m
Medicare Annual Wellness Visits (AWVs) a fantastic risk adjustment tool–but don’t sleep on FFS
If you work in outpatient CDI you might have already reached the conclusion that the Medicare Annual Wellness Visit (AMW) is your friend. You’d be right. The AWV is first and foremost a tool for preventive screening and health. But it’s also a powerful tool in the arsenal of mid-revenue cycle work. For Medicare Advantage…
Read MoreThe Great Sepsis War rages on; will we see a truce, or a winner?
By Brian Murphy The Great Sepsis War rages on. The infection itself, which kills hundreds of thousands every year, but also in the hallowed halls of coding classification. Where in the A41.9 will we end up with this deadly but controversial infection? (aside: sepsis isn’t funny, but the rage elicited over conflicting definitions and…
Read MoreDifferent Minds, Extraordinary Strengths: The UC Davis Coding Internship Story
Listen to the podcast. This country does a decent job in our primary schools working with children and young adults with special needs. Certainly many improvements have been made in the last 40-50 years. But once neurodivergent kids become adults, that support seems to vanish. Tami Gomez stepped into this large breach by launching the UC Davis Neurodiversity Coding Internship Program. This new program creates professional pathways for neurodivergent individuals by offering hands-on training, mentorship,…
Read MoreDownload The State of Physician Queries
Download the report. The old-timers—and perhaps a few relatively recent-timers—will recall a recent past when a query was pretty straightforward. Discrete to the encounter. Fee-for-service. Reimbursement driven. Ask the question, get a response. Dusted and done. Those days are long gone. A query isn’t just a query, anymore. And that’s a good thing. This new…
Read MoreOne Norwood Auditor, Outsized Returns
One good, highly skilled inpatient coding auditor with a fresh perspective and broad experience can deliver outsized returns for your healthcare organization. We have a great example. A large, integrated healthcare organization was missing justified secondary diagnoses and properly sequenced principal diagnoses in the documentation. The result? Underrepresentation of its severity of illness/risk of mortality, and diminished revenue. All confirmed via independent audit. Norwood partnered to provide a seasoned, credentialed, and skilled inpatient coding auditor to help right the ship. …
Read MoreThe Next Chapter: Faisal Hussain on change, creativity, family, and finding balance
Listen to the episode here. A lot has changed in the world of Faisal Hussain since he last went under the white-hot spotlight of the Off the Record podcast studios. A new career path, with a new company. Growing children, with whom he gets to spend more time. A surprise award, bestowed by his college alma mater. And many new changes in the…
Read MoreCMS Failure to Rescue quality measure financial impact hitting soon
By Brian Murphy A reminder: The new CMS Failure to Rescue (FTR) quality measure is going to hit hospital pocketbooks—possibly your own—on October 1. Key details of the new CMS FTR measure (FY 2025 IPPS Update) Definition: The percentage of surgical inpatients who experience a complication and subsequently die within 30 days of their initial…
Read MoreIf a GLP-1 drops your BMI under 35, is morbid obesity off the table?
By Brian Murphy At the ACDIS conference last week, an interesting obesity coding question posed during a Q&A session at the Outpatient Symposium: Should we continue to code morbid obesity for patients who were previously morbidly obese (BMI greater than 35 with obesity-related comorbidities), but because they are on an active GLP-1 their BMI is…
Read MoreMedical Record Maestro: Reimagining CDI in the Age of AI and the Longitudinal Record
Download the episode here. We need a “human in the loop” in mid-revenue cycle work, experts say. What they fail to address is the more interesting question: Precisely where? Back-end AI fact-checker? Front-end query authorizer? Or, maybe something like my current OTR guest Penny Jefferson envisions: Medical record maestro. The end-to-end connectedness of the medical record, evolving API standards, increased use of prior authorization, episode-based reimbursement models, and review of all of this by AI and other tools makes documentation cohesion more important than…
Read MoreNew ACDIS/AHIMA physician query practice brief (2026) puts mid-revenue cycle leaders front and center in compliance
By Brian Murphy At the ACDIS conference last week, a bombshell announcement: A new physician query brief, the joint output of ACDIS/AHIMA. You can read it here on the ACDIS website. The organizations are accepting comments through June 12, and may make changes based upon them. So, give it a thoughtful read and submit your…
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