It has become clear that our current health care system is in need of improvement in many different areas. Clinical documentation improvement is one area that needs to be focused on. At this point clinical documentation of health care services provided to clients is done by using a set of diagnostic codes, ICD-9-CM. These codes are used in order to represent the reason, or reasons, that a patient came in to the health care facility. It is most common that these codes are created through the interaction experienced between the patient and health care provider from the time that they check in at the desk to the time they leave the facility.
There will be a big change for health care providers and medical coders as the ICD-9-CM diagnostic codes gives way to the updated and more extensive ICD-10-CM code generation. The ICD-10 is a new development in the technology and depth of diagnostic codes that can be applied to patients. The new codes are designed to be universal and more accurate in recording patient diagnosis and conditions.The thought is that this new set of codes is a step in the direction of improving clinical documentation.
Clinical documentation improvement is an area that can potentially save the industry money as well as increase the quality of care, so think many health care providers as well as health insurance providers believe that. It is the documentation of the interactions between providers and patients that may be the key to providing them with the necessary care. This in turn could translate to higher cost savings. The improvement of clinical documentation can help medical problems become realized and taken care of quickly which could translate into lower re-admittance, something that covers a large portion of costs in hospitals and health care providers.
Many different programs exist to help with clinical documentation improvement and they span over a number of different specific health care specialties. By increasing accuracy within the coding of the interaction between patients and doctors, clinical documentation improvement programs aim at improving care as well as increaseing cost savings. CDI training and education programs are available for physician coders and medical coders through many different. These programs give these professionals a chance to improve their capabilities which then translates to an improvement of the entire system. Health care providers should be taking advantage of these programs in order to improve quality of care and diagnostic tools.
