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Medical coding mistakes
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Medical coder and biller have as a goal to make sure that the provider that they work for gets their reimbursement for all their services. Unfortunately is common to incur in some human and electronics errors while submitting the claims. These errors would prevent the insurance companies from paying the bills, rejected it and returned it to the biller, so the claim can be corrected and resubmitted. Bellow I will explain some common errors of claim rejection.
INCORRECT PATIENT INFORMATION
These errors occur when the claim submitted has errors related to patient demographic data as their right age, miss spell name, wrong date of birth, incorrect gender, previous address or wrong address, also when the patient policy number is not the right one
During the 1980’s and 90’s there were many studies done that showed that medical errors were occurring in inpatient and outpatient settings at a very high rate. Computer Provider Order Entry (CPOE) systems were designed to reduce or eliminate mistakes made by using hand written orders. The CPOE system allows users to directly enter their orders into the system on computers which are then sent directly to the healthcare providers that will be implementing the orders. Previously orders were placed by writing on order sheets on patient charts. This was sometimes done by the doctor or by a nurse acting on behalf of the doctor. Order sheets were then signed by the doctor and then the information was input into the patient’s record. This left room for error due to misreading bad handwriting, confusing medications with similar names, etc.
The article quotes this as the “worst type of preanalytical error”. The reason behind this is the result of this error means that a patient is treated for a disease or illness that they are not suffering from. This could be by medication or treatments even as extreme as chemotherapy. Problems that then grow from this is the effects of the treatment can be life threatening as they are managing a condition that isn’t there. An example of this is if a patient is incorrectly prescribed warfarin, an anticoagulant to treat blood clotting but has no issues with blood clotting the blood will thin and increase blood pressure leading to serious health defects.
Claims sent to the insurance companies could be rejected or denied. A health care facility is there to help people with their health, but they are a business that needs income to stay in business. If a medical facility or physician files a claim that is incorrect the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services may get involved, this could mean audits, fines, or worse. Medical coding and billing are very precise and detailed work where mistakes can cause serious problems.
Medical billing transforms health care services into billing claims. The responsibility of the biller is to follow that claim to ensure the physicians, hospitals, third party billing companies, as well as federal and state governments receive reimbursement for the work that is provided. An experienced biller can boost revenue performance for the facility while keeping the business running smoothly.
There are several errors that can occur in the billing and the coding process. When there’s a problem in the coding process it can cause rejected claims. Some of these problems consist of truncated coding, mismatch between the gender or age of the patient and the selected code when the code involves selection for either criterion, assumption coding (reporting items or services that were not documented, but that the coder assumes were performed), altering documentation after services are reported, coding without proper documentation, reporting services that are produces produced by unlicensed and or unqualified clinical personnel, coding a unilateral service twice instead of choosing the bilateral code, and not satisfying the conditions of coverage for a particular service. These errors can result in denials or payments being delay...
Medical error occurs more than most people realize and when a doctor is found negligent the patient has the right to sue for compensation of their losses. Debates and issues arise when malpractice lawsuits are claimed. If a patient is filing for a medical malpractice case, the l...
Nurses were the professional group who most often reported medication errors and older patients were those most often affected in the medication errors reports analyzed for this study (Friend, 2011). Medication error type’s revealed omitted medicine or dose, wrong dose, strength or frequency and wrong documentation were the most common problems at Site A where the traditional pen and paper methods of prescription were used; and wrong documentation and omission were the most common problems associated with medication errors at Site B where the electronic MMS was introduced (Friend, 2011). Reports of problems such as wrong drug, wrong dose, strength or frequency, quantity, wrong route, wrong drug and omitted dose were less frequent at Site B (Friend, 2011). The reduced incidence of omission errors at Site B supports suggestions that an advantage of the MMS is easy identification of patient requirements at each drug round time slot. Despite the finding of less omission errors at site B where the MMS had been introduced, there was a relatively high frequency in the incident reports of medication errors related to both omission and wrong dose, strength and frequency at both sites (Friend, 2011).
Hospital medical errors can involve medicines (e.g., wrong drug, wrong dose, bad combination), an inaccurate or incomplete diagnosis, equipment malfunction, surgical mistakes, or laboratory errors. High medical error rates with serious consequences occurs in intensive care units, operating rooms, and emergency departments; but, serious errors that harmed patients may have prevented or minimized. Understand the nature of the error
A medication error is any preventable event that may cause or lead to inappropriate medication use or harm to a patient (NCCMERP 2014). The death rate for medication errors averages around 7,000 deaths per year. Lawsuits for medication errors were mainly made against registered nurses because nurses are the last people to check a medication before it is administered. 426 medication error related lawsuits were made against registered nurses. (RightDiagnosis 2014).
Case 1 -- You work in a busy multi-specialty clinic with a high patient volume. The physicians enter the type of code that will yield the greatest reimbursement. You suspect the codes are not accurate.
Medical and medication errors and adverse events are well known issues in the health care industry, regardless of country. Errors are either the correct implementation of the wrong procedure or the wrong implementation of the correct procedure (IOM, 1999 pp23-25). Adverse events are considered unintended injuries and/or harm that are caused to the patient but not necessarily due to human error. This proposal will present a technical solution, using case based reasoning, to help prevent the occurrence of errors, thus reduce adverse events, and to make suggestions to the line staff as to what to do when such an event or error happens.
The health care is extremely important to society because without health care it would not be possible for individuals to remain healthy. The health care administers care, treats, and diagnoses millions of individual’s everyday from newborn to fatal illness patients. The health care consists of hospitals, outpatient care, doctors, employees, and nurses. Within the health care there are always changes occurring because of advance technology and without advance technology the health care would not be as successful as it is today. Technology has played a big role in the health care and will continue in the coming years with new methods and procedures of diagnosis and treatment to help safe lives of the American people. However, with plenty of advance technology the health care still manages to make an excessive amount of medical errors. Health care organizations face many issues and these issues have a negative impact on the health care system. There are different ways medical errors can occur within the health care. Medical errors are mistakes that are made by health care providers with no intention of harming patients. These errors rang from communication error, surgical error, manufacture error, diagnostic error, and wrong medication error. There are hundreds of thousands of patients that die every year due to medical error. With medical errors on the rise it has caused the United States to be the third leading cause of death. (Allen.M, 2013) Throughout the United States there are many issues the he...
It is shocking to know that every year 98000 patients die from medical errors that can be prevented(Kohn, L. T., Corrigan, J. M., & Donaldson, M. S. (Eds.), 2000). Medical errors are not a new issue in our healthcare system; these have been around for a long time. Hospitals have been trying to improve quality care and patients safety by implementing different strategies to prevent and reduce medical errors for past thirty years. Medical errors are the third leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer in America (Allen, 2013). In addition medical errors are costing our healthcare system an estimated $735 billion to $980 billion (Andel, Davidow, Hollander, & Moreno, 2012).
Research Feedback Form 1. What did you learn during your research placement? In my research placement, I was able to build a better understanding of Bioretention Cells and cattails, specifically their benefits, purposes and properties, and why it is important to study them. I got to work with several graduate students in the Environmental Lab and was able to assist them with their research in analyzing soil of bioretention cells and water from wetlands.
Correction (defects): Adverse drug reactions. Readmission because of inappropriate discharge. Repeating tests because of incorrect information. Waiting Waiting for doctors to discharge patients. Waiting for the test results.