What book is it? - sm Posted: Nov 28th, 2015 - 11:19 am In Reply to: Thanks :) I think you are right and I am just in a temporary rut. - frustrated newbie
What book is it? The exercises in good textbooks (AHIMA, AHA, AMA, Optum, for example) contain realistic medical scenarios, but will be a little vague to provide for thinking, discussion, and learning how to identify and deal with inadequate documentation.
When you say sequencing, I wonder if you are confusing the sequence of the codes in an answer with a required sequence. Some codes do need to be sequenced in a particular order, but you can easily determine that from the guidelines even if the codebook does not tell you what to do. Many times the textbooks will have multiple codes in an answer that do not necessarily have to fall in the sequence in the answer key. The answer key just can't provide you with all possible options.
External cause codes are actually purposeful. It is often important to know how an injury occurred. This is used in payment situations, such as when an automobile insurer needs to pay for a hospitalization rather than the patient's own medical insurance, and it is used by organizations and researchers to track and help reduce injuries and the adverse effects of medical care. Adding an external cause code may seem nonsensical or redundant to you at this point, but those codes are the means to retrieving the data needed for tracking. If you are only considering billing needs, many things in coding seem odd. Coding isn't just for billing though.
Reply By Email Options
Complete Discussion Below: (  marks the location of current message within thread)
|
