There are four valves in the heart that separate either the heart chambers from each other, or separate blood flow from heart blood flow.  They are, in the left heart, […]

Classification systems like ICD-10-CM and ICD-10-PCS are all about trade-offs—balancing the ongoing need for new levels of detail with the increasing complexity of the classification. PCS has its own unique […]

As the activity around the forthcoming 2020 election period is heating up, and with it, talk of “Medicare-For-All” options, I thought I’d begin my contribution to the Inside Angle blog […]

For those of us facing “maturity,” when we were growing up the year 2020 seemed an impossibly exotic thing, the stuff of science fiction. Time has flown like a freaking […]

Part one of this two-part blog was a high-level summary of two major areas of focus in the proposed MS-DRG changes: the MCC/CC designations and the “unrelated OR DRGs. This […]

If there is a theme to this year’s proposed MS-DRG changes in the IPPS proposed rule, it is “ICD-10 Data.” Now that two years’ worth of ICD-10 coded MedPAR data […]

 “During my years caring for patients, the most common pathology I saw was not heart disease or diabetes; it was loneliness … loneliness was often in the background of clinical […]

In my last blog, I recommended checking out excerpts from the March ICD-10 Coordination and Maintenance meeting. Those excerpts were written proposals for ICD-10 codes describing SDOH (social determinants of […]

While reading AAPC’s Healthcare Business Monthly, April 2019, I came across an article about problem lists by Mary Wood and Michael Warner. The authors include an example of a poorly […]

Spring means different things depending on what part of the country you live in. For me, spring means melting snow, flowers and spring cleaning. This also seems like a good […]

I’ve got a two-part (maybe three-part) homework assignment for you: Read a pair of proposals for new ICD-10 codes, presented at the March C&M meeting. They are each two pages […]

What is Parkinson’s disease? It is a neurodegenerative disorder that affects predominately dopamine-producing (“dopaminergic”) neurons in a specific area of the brain called the substantia nigra. The substantia nigra cells […]