Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Computer Assisted Coding, A Look into the Future of Coding.

Fusion CAC is computer-assisted coding software designed to enhance your inpatient and outpatient coding process by speeding revenue capture and diminishing the risk of coding errors, variability and regulatory examination.

Fusion CAC does not replace your coders or your coding system. Fusion CAC is designed to supplement your coding effort to reduce backlog and the DNFB and /or reduce or eliminate your dependency on expensive outsourcing. Fusion CAC utilizes a natural language processing (NLP) engine that ‘reads’ the text of a patient’s chart and automatically assigns highly accurate codes. Your medical coders are presented with a chart, already coded, for verification and validation before submission to your existing encoder solution. This process dramatically increases a coders speed and accuracy in completing charts.

“Keys to Increasing Coder Productivity”

What if we have a paper chart?
Most facilities work with a paper chart but, what is not realized is that about 90% of that paper comes from an electronic system. We integrate to capture the electronic copies that are found in your transcription, lab, cardiology, pathology, and other systems.

Natural Language Processing (NLP)
NLP is a software technology that uses artificial intelligence to extract pertinent data and terms from a text-based document and convert them into a set of medical codes to be used or edited by a coding professional. NLP allows the physician to dictate as they would normally. Natural Language Understand will pick up pivotal key words or phrases even if not presented the same.

For example, “Bronchogenic Carcinoma” is said in one section of the patients chart but “Lung Cancer” is mentioned in a different section. Both terms would code the same based on how the engine reads and assigns codes.

Benefits of the CAC technology:

Increase Coder Productivity
Using Fusion CAC will allow your coders to work with a pre-coded chart to verify, validate, and complete the codes presented by the NLP software. Since the coder does not need to start from scratch, the time to code a patient chart is dramatically reduced.
Customer results indicate that the time to code outpatient charts can be reduced by over 80%.

Decreasing Coder Variability
Code variability between coders is a reality. Fusion CAC codes consistently and without this human variation. Therefore, coders are presented charts with predictable and unvarying set of codes to diagnosis to reduce or eliminate code inconsistency.

CAC can help with impacts to the coding industry:

Recovery Audit Contractors:
The ability to respond to an audit with precision is essential. With Fusion CAC a chart and the entire coding event is stored for future searches. Internal coding reviews as well as external coding audits are aided by the hyper-linking of resulting codes to the exact documents and keywords in the chart that resulted in the billing codes.

Present on Admission:
Fusion CAC can assist in automating this function by presenting a POA summary sheet with pre-selected status codes for coder verification before submission. This module further reduces manual intervention in reporting these pay-for-performance initiatives.

Recovery Re-Submission:
This module is extremely beneficial to all facilities that are looking to increase efficiency by maintaining a reduced DNFB interval coupled with squeezing out and retrieving missing revenue by processing all the components of the patient chart that might affect the case reimbursement. Additionally, a fully completed chart increases the accessibility of data and addresses chart thoroughness as well directly impacting incomplete submissions, a source of lost revenue.
Fusion's CAC delivers high functionality at an affordable price. Contact us today for a free demonstration

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