Question

Examine and evaluate one of the following topics and write a Blog post of 1000 words on this topic. Evaluate how computer-assisted coding (CAC) applications relate to the financial (revenue cycle) side of healthcare operations, and give specific examples. Evaluate key points regarding the purpose of clinical documentation improvement programs and how they help prevent fraud and abuse, as well as how it relates to the financial side of healthcare operations.

Answer 1

Since most clinical information systems parallel order entry systems in the business vertical, health information management (HIM) departments consequently have been put in the state as a secondary priority within hospital systems. The CIS systems that are available to hospitals have still to include a fully functional Computer Assisted Coding (CAC) capability within the main system. Therefore, CAC technologies have been made available from coding specialized companies that offer bolt-on systems that complement the CIS system. It is interesting that most CIS systems have not made it a higher priority to provide an integrated coding system tucked into their platforms. The process of efficiently and accurately coding is an important part of the revenue cycle and financial system because of its interrelationship with the healthcare billing process, which is the epicenter for hospital profitability.

Currently, despite of the primacy of medical coding to the hospital revenue cycle and with CAC maturing and refining according to Moore’s Law mathematical rates, these systems are certainly not seen as a priority for new systems purchase. However, due to the relative newness of CAC, real return on investment studies that can be generalized, justified and expanded are rare and mainly incomplete.

Despite the crucial role medical coding plays in the hospital financial universe, and the inefficient, burdensome manual process that coding presently involves, it seems that CAC solutions of any type nonetheless remain low on the radar screen. There is indeed a compelling argument for the immediate deployment of CAC systems throughout the industry based on the very nature of the present day manual coding process.

The level of acceptance of CAC technology is further hindered by the muddied waters of complexity fomented by a few early CAC developers who have existed in this field for a number of years. Their methodological approach has been widely trumpeted and reviewed by the existing HIM community as having limitations, due in part to the fact that many of these solutions can only code within particular specialties such as Radiology and or the Emergency Department.

Alternatively, the need to improve clinical documentation often by leveraging a template driven system, often viewed by the clinical user as confining and limiting, also slows CAC acceptance. Unfortunately, those technologies that have technological limitations further defer widespread acceptance of the technology until these constraints are alleviated. For example - Apple Newton’s early failure contrasted to the overwhelming success of Palm and other PDA’s as evidence of this phenomenon. The Newton was a series of personal digital assistants developed and marketed by Apple Inc. An early device in the PDA category the Newton originated the term "personal digital assistant" it was the first to feature handwriting recognition. In 1985, after Apple discontinued its poorly selling Lisa computer and faced plummeting Macintosh sales, their CEO, Steve Jobs, was ousted from the company he started from his garage. By 1997 though, Jobs was back at Apple, and picking up the mess. The company was months away from bankruptcy. Jobs turned the company’s focus to innovating great products again. By 2012, after inventing the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad, Apple became one of the most valuable company’s on the planet.

Furthermore, there is a continuing Achilles heel within the medical coding community involving coder accuracy and variability. Even before the arrival of CAC systems, there has been no "gold standard" within the coding community. However, the appearance of CAC solutions brought into sharp focus the accuracy question. CAC solutions were forced to wear the "inaccuracy" label from coders, when, in reality, coders themselves admit that coding often has no real universal "right answer." Typically, for any new breakthrough to be accepted there is always the additional challenge of creating a new paradigm. However, with CAC, there seems to be an unusual number of obstacles.

CAC systems have the potential to decrease the inefficiency and variability pervasive in the manual coding process. To date, there are numerous CAC deployments even with real limitations in some of the older solutions available. Some of this lack of acceptance appears to stem from the self-stated complexity in the methodology creating a negative mindset hindering the implementation of these systems.15 New data suggests that CACs can easily serve to improve HIM process flow and document handling efficiency. Today the new CAC systems can process any document from any source in any format, irrespective of admission status, location or type of service. These new technologies show an even greater benefit with other more involved and complex types of coding transactions, such as found with ICD-10. Even though new code sets typically take coders longer to process, with CACs it significantly reduces processing time and time reduction saves money. This provides an easy financial justification for this new type of CAC solution.

Another volatile issue is the coder’s concern about job security. This, no doubt, also adds to the resistance to CAC deployment. This is a false misconception as coders leverage CAC’s to quicken the coding process and therefore focus their time and energy on auditing charts to make sure they are accurate. The roles for coders are becoming more pervasive and complex as new requirements and regulations are enacted. This will be the evolution within HIM, directly paralleling the history of technological innovation within our society. For example, today instead of using typewriters to create correspondence, we use computers. All indications point to a greater acceptance of CAC technology in the future. The advantages of this evolving technology are listed below.

CAC Advantages

• Improve coder efficiency
• Decrease coder variability
• Streamline document handling process
• Connecting through centralized interfaces
• Maintain clinical environment neutral
• Coder redeployment to more mission critical tasks

CAC Negative Issues and Obstacles

• Not a hospital technology priority
• Minimal data on return on investment
• Perceived complexity of implementation
• Technological limitations in a clinical setting
• Specialty and subspecialty- specific
• Accuracy in a world of coder variability
• Staff replacement

Conclusion

Computer Assisted Coding, along with the evolving technology of Natural Language Processing, continues to become a more common HIM technology solution. CAC solutions now can provide a variety of innovative and useful abstractions of clinical information which can be seamlessly provided to healthcare workers, clinicians and patients alike, thus improving the delivery and efficiency of healthcare. CAC solutions that can provide analysis of the full array of medical documentation can play a focal role in managing the ever increasingly complex requirements facing the hospital HIM department. The promise that this underlying technology can be viewed as the next leap in the healthcare information age is promising and healthcare executives should stay tuned to the upcoming developments.