Find Your Way around Your ICD-9 Manual with these Tips
Hint: Always verify your alphabetic index findings with the tabular list.
If you’re new to home health coding, you may find the gigantic ICD-9 manual daunting. But this hefty volume is a coder’s best friend. The following tips will have you nailing down the right diagnosis codes in no time.
Know the Difference between NOS and NEC
Management Tip: Expert Suggests MDS Nurses Use This Approach for COT OMRAs
If they don’t, this is what could happen.
Marilyn Mines, BSN, RN, RAC-CT, BC, believes MDS coordinators should actually take a look at the therapy logs to decide whether to do a COT OMRA.
Mines recounts how she recently asked a MDS coordinator if she was seeing the potential for a COT OMRA. And the nurse said that the therapy supervisor notified her if one was required. But that practice is “really kind of dangerous. If the therapist is wrong, then the MDS nurse is the one held responsible for not doing the COT OMRA,” cautions Mines, manager of clinical services for FR&R Healthcare Consulting Inc. in Deerfield, Ill.
Patient Privacy: Avoid These Cell Phone HIPAA Land Mines
Contacting on-call physicians via text or mobile phone? Make sure those communications are HIPAA-compliant.
Mobile phones may go hand-in-hand with busy physicians who must be reachable at all times, but when it comes to HIPAA safety, these ubiquitous devices can be a thorn in your side. Make sure you are using your cell phones in a HIPAA-appropriate way with these quick tips.
Ensure the Safety of Emails and Texts
Scenario: Your on-call physician asks you to contact him if any patients phone in. When you call his cell phone, he texts back saying that he can’t talk but he also requests details about the sick patient’s condition via text. Can you text him back with a patient’s protected health information (PHI), or is that forbidden?