Wellington, FL -- (SBWIRE) -- 05/10/2013 -- Health Systems Management Network’s (HSMN) Start Ten Program Plus, has begun to focus its clients on the conversion to MS-DRG’s under ICD-10-CM/PCS. HSMN has already announced that they will assist their clients on focusing its clinical documentation improvement consulting on creating partnerships between clinical practice and coding knowledge.

HSMN in its work with clients for almost thirty years has proven that the “Bridge” between clinical decision making and appropriate clinical documentation has always been in a weak state. HSMN has heard that the attending and faculty tell them that they do not want coders telling them how to diagnose or that coders don’t understand what this surgical procedure is all about.

The real issue has been: can a real bridge be built between the way clinicians think, and what is now required under ICD-10-CM clinical documentation requirements. At first glance these entities are miles apart. However, experience has taught HSMN along with the brilliant medical staff with whom we have worked over the last thirty years that the “Bridge” can be constructed and maintained but the construction process must begin this year.

HSMN announces something its client base already knows. The clinical documentation requirements for ICD-10-CM require specificity in the extreme; they are also a logical extension of the unarticulated process that goes on when decisions are made after diagnosis and assessment. Looking carefully at the transition from ICD-9-CM to ICD-10-CM the specificity is logical and serves to focus everyone on the clinical “Team” on the patient problem list in more detail allowing a better integration of “Caring Disciplines” to be more specific in what they do and document.

HSMN has always rounded with care givers to better understand what they do clinically and to help them better articulate in clinical documentation, the problems, assessments, therapeutics and resolutions.

Too often in the past the nursing profession has had a set of clinical documentation guidelines that did not answer the questions most physicians wanted to know about their patients: What is the outcome of treatment today? What is the patient status related to the problem which has been diagnosed?

ICD-10-CM provides a new opportunity to support all of the clinical “Team” in being precise in describing the patient problem list: what actions have been taken, and what are the outcomes and status. In order to do this HSMN’s team of clinical documentation implementation consultants and coding staff deconstruct active cases in ICD-9- CM and present the gaps or problems with those cases together with hospital staff. What follows is a reconstruction of the “live case” in ICD-10-CM/PCS and a presentation of its “Grand Rounds”.

Physician/Clinical involvement is much more focused when we work with real cases and do it on a prospective basis. HSMN has used this methodology for almost thirty years on all of the previous iterations of the coding schema.

The most important thing is to bring the team together around learning at the same time. This will include the coders who will be asked to spend time in the clinical area so that they understand completely. This also assumes that the coders chosen to lead the charge have very good critical thinking skills.

Please contact HSMN by phone 866-908-4226 or email info@hsmn.com to discuss how they may be of help in transitioning to the new paradigm. They can help you build the bridge between clinical decision making and revenue.