Posts by Norwood Staffing
Top 5 Reasons Why You Should Be Working as a Traveling Case Manager
Case managers play a crucial role in coordinating patient care, optimizing outcomes, and ensuring smooth transitions across healthcare settings. But adding in the element of travel makes the role doubly unique and rewarding. If you’re considering a career in healthcare with a sense of adventure, travel case management is where it’s at. Here are…
Read MoreState of the CDI profession? Never brighter
Download our complementary special report Here at Norwood we’re excited about the state of the CDI profession. Are you? We hope so—and you should be. The numbers paint a pretty positive picture. In this complementary special report we summarize the interesting and varied work available to CDI professionals, compensation trends (headed upwards), tech…
Read MoreCodes, codes, and more codes: New FY 2024 ICD-10-CM, ICD-10-PCS codes hit the encoder
June was a big month if you have anything to do with medical coding. Codes, codes, and more codes—both additions, deletions, and code title revisions. On Friday June 16 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released the FY 2024 ICD-10-CM (diagnosis) codes updates. That came hard on the heels of the release of…
Read MoreLighting a CDI fire with Tom Brazelton, CDI medical director UW Health
News flash: Many (most?) physicians aren’t on board with CDI initiatives and coding practice. It’s understandable; they’re busy with patient care, and in their remaining hours are swamped with chart completion. Answering clinical queries and documenting with greater specificity is either seen as a chore or falls by the wayside entirely. Sometimes it takes real-world…
Read MoreAHA pushes back on CMS IPPS quality proposals including SEP-1, HAC Reduction Program
By Brian Murphy As we sit in the waiting period between the IPPS proposed rule and the final rule (likely out in August), I took a look at the American Hospital Association’s comments. So that you didn’t have to. Link below. As a reminder CMS welcomes public comments as part of its rulemaking process. In…
Read MoreAnalysis of 17 OIG reports reveals compliance blueprints for Medicare Advantage and provider organizations
Part 1 of an ongoing series By Jason Jobes Today I am starting a series on my analysis of the 17 Medicare Advantage OIG reviews released from 2022-2023. Given the rule released on extrapolation earlier this year hopefully we can use some of the findings to springboard improvement. Thanks for reading. If you find this…
Read MoreOne EPIC Nation. Is it Coming?
By Brian Murphy There appears to be an inevitable march toward one giant dominating the healthcare industry. An EPIC win in the EHR industry, you might say. If so, what does this mean for healthcare? With all due respect to AthenaHealth, Meditech, Oracle/Cerner, etc., EPIC is the 800-pound gorilla of EHRs and shows no sign…
Read MoreAntarctic Anecdotes: The real-life adventure of ex-CDI physician advisor Howard Rodenberg
There comes a point in our life when we all need to take an adventure. For most that means a vacation to an exotic faraway continent. For others, that might mean taking a new job, or changing careers altogether. Or starting a family. All of these are adventures of one sort or another. All are wonderful.…
Read MoreHow do you handle “unable to determine” query responses?
By Brian Murphy Unable to determine. Love it? Hate it? Or do you understand why it must (usually) be offered as a query option? The latest ACDIS-AHIMA guidance, Guidelines for Achieving a Compliant Query Practice, imply that “unable to determine” should typically (but crucially, not always) be offered to the physician in a traditional multiple-choice…
Read MoreMajor Depressive Disorder: Report accurately, and shore up the medical record against denial
By Brian Murphy Large caveat to the following: I am not a clinician, nor a coder, though my work frequently brushes up to clinical coding. I was having a recent conversation with my colleague Jason Jobes for an upcoming episode of Off the Record, during which we touched on OIG audits of HCCs and unsupported…
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