Many of HSMN’s clients have decided that they needed to take their coders off line and put them into intensive training for ICD 10-CM/PCS.  In order to do that HSMN’s clients needed to know whether they could find a group who could in every way replicate the quality and productivity of the internal staff.

HSMN was asked by these clients, many of whom are complex Medical Centers/Academic Medical Centers to draft criteria and a program by which outside Coding vendors could be selected. HSMN’s auditing Group came together and fashioned Protocols, training, credentialing, identification of high volume high complex Coding areas and finally productivity needs of specific Clinical areas.

While doing this review, the clients have asked us to be frank about how well the Medical staff and coders were performing under ICD 9 parameters. This included  adequacy of the Clinical Documentation, Coder understanding of the clinical content for each clinical discipline and finally how their “System” performed in getting clean claims out the door.

The HSMN team prepared a Prospective Protocol and used it to provide feedback to the client that would help them better focus on not only overall ICD 10 but on the clinical areas that needed strengthening in both the Clinical Documentation and the Coding effort.

With those determinations made, HSMN was then asked if it could provide interim coders using our Audit staff to assure high performance and continuity. For thirty years HSMN has provided consulting services in  Clinical Documentation improvement and Coding in every setting with great success.  The request to actually provide Coding services and work with the Medical Staff was not entirely new but surprising.  HSMN has formed a Special Unit of Coding services to provide both interim support and education of the Medical staff as appropriate and needed.  Since HSMN has been in business for thirty years, its staff are one of the most experienced and have trained younger coders to their standard.

Today HSMN has taken on the challenge and it is now working with a number of clients in this difficult task of helping with the transition period to ICD 10 while at the same time helping the organization make improvements to their clinical documentation.  We are accepting a few more clients until June of this year.

For more information, call 866-908-4226 or contact us.