Major Medical Center with Months of Coding Backlog
When Phoenix met with the VP of Revenue Cycle and the Director of Coding, this facility was on the verge of bankruptcy. One look at their backlog of charts told the story! Phoenix brought their army of remote coders to bear on this problem, cleared out hundreds of charts and the reimbursement was staggering. Today, Phoenix has remained their mainstay for Coding and they are thriving!
We addressed the Inpatient charts first in order to generate the most revenue quickly. Clearing that backlog by accessing the clinical data in the EMR generated hundreds of thousands of dollars for this facility immediately! Once that was down to a manageable size, we went to work on the Outpatient charts.
We were also able to provide the facility with the issues that contributed to the backlog, and therefore, prevent it from happening again. We were able to report our findings, for instance, that the Operative Reports were not exporting into the EMR record, which resulted in uncoded cases.
We could identify undictated charts by Department and Physician, enabling the facility to set up a new process to ensure the charts were dictated in a timely fashion. For instance, we uncovered that critical information was not being dictated for Wound Care reports, which accounted for a significant number of the uncoded charts. With that information, the department was able to educate the dictators on the required information and the problem was eliminated going forward.
Coding backlogs can build slowly or happen suddenly. The expectation in most facilities is that charts should be coded within 3 to 5 days of discharge, and Accounts Receivable needs to be below a predetermined dollar amount. In this facility, the backlog started off slowly, and when it grew to several hundred charts, far outside of the 3 to 5 days of discharge, they knew they needed help. Facing bankruptcy, this facility chose to hire Phoenix versus hiring additional coders. They needed help with their backlog quickly. Therefore, recruiting new staff was not an option in the time frame that they required. And Phoenix has remained their remote coding service, and no backlog has occurred since!