Events
The 2nd Annual Star Ratings Leadership Summit
May 21, 2012 to May 22, 2012
Booth #Silver Sponsor
Location
Aria Hotel & Casino
3730 Las Vegas Boulevard South
Las Vegas, NV 89158
Peak Health Solutions is a Silver Sponsor for this RISE event being held in Las Vegas at the Aria Resort & Casino.
New this year at the 2nd Annual Star Ratings Leadership Summit, is the “Stars Technology Sampler: Hear the Best and the Brightest in the Industry Discuss the Latest in Technology Affection Your Plan” on Monday, May 21 at 4:30pm. Peak’s own Bryan Lee and Greg Lea will be sharing their thoughts on HRA Documentation & Clinical Data Through Technology. In this session, you will have a chance to see some of our specially developed technology and how this will work for you in the future.
This session is going to be presented in an in-formal “speed dating” format, allowing you to be personally involved with the discussion and ask them how this technology will affect you.
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We are excited to welcome Lidiya Ter-Markarova, BA, RHIT, CCS, AHIMA ICD-10 Certified Trainer who joins the Peak Health Solutions Team from Palomar Health, a 450 bed multi-hospital health system in San Diego County where she was the District Director of Coding, Charge Services/CDM, and CDI. Lidiya has also worked and taught a Coding course at UCSD and she has held Coding leadership positions in several prominent medical centers in Washington state.
Lidiya’s expertise includes healthcare systems improvement, healthcare documentation and coding compliance, and streamlining processes of coding, charge capture, and revenue cycle. Lidiya was also instrumental in designing an effective strategy to counteract the adverse impact of RAC and MIC audits. She recently contributed to a ICD-10 Coding resource which is in the process of being published by AHIMA.
We are very excited that Lidiya has joined Peak Health Solutions as Director of Coding and Clinical Documentation Improvement. In this capacity she will provide oversight of all remote and onsite coding, auditing, training, CDI, and RAC services. She will also be actively involved in our ICD-10 transitional activities as we prepare our clients and workforce for this monumental cutover. Lidiya’s leadership, technical and clinical experience will enable Peak to reach new heights in all of our service offerings.
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Dear Healthcare Colleague,
Following the announcement from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Acting Administrator Marilyn Tavenner and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to revisit the timeline for transitioning from ICD-9 to ICD-10, followed by the statement last week that a notice of proposed rulemaking will be issued, Peak Health Solutions fielded calls from concerned clients. Cassi Birnbaum, MS, RHIA, CPHQ, Vice President of Health Information Management spent most of her time at HIMSS working with Industry Leaders, and providing guidance to AHIMA members and those involved in ICD initiatives on strategies to guide their respective organizations. She also outlined several advocacy approaches to convince the industry to “stay the course”.
Ms. Birnbaum, spent time with CIOs, CMIOs and other Physician leadership at HIMSS to identify opportunities to address the AMA’s assertion that the provider community is not ready. Are there ways that we can engage this group in our transition strategy? Is there a rapid response approach that will provide a focused approach? Peak Health Solutions has closely monitored CMS, American Medical Association, AHIMA, HIMSS, CHIME and the positions to advise and address the needs and concerns of our clients who rely on Peak for their coding, auditing, training, clinical documentation, ICD-10, and risk adjustment services and solutions.
Many of our clients are contacting us for guidance, in anticipation of a likely delay from October 2013 to a later deadline. Peak is advising clients who are questioning the need to stay on track with their ICD-10 implementation road maps or if they should delay the kick-off of their impending engagements to to forge ahead. “Derailing a transitional effort midstream could result in the need to expend more resources later, and re-jump starting this monumental effort, will result in more stress to organizations in the long run”, according to Birnbaum. We have outlined a few key recommendations to help you and your organization to ride out this current “political storm”:
1. Invest in clinical documentation improvement. This is not only the foundation for ICD-10, but improved documentation also has the following direct and immediate benefits to:
- Improve patient care through complete, accurate and relevant documentation. Peak’s focus is on assuring that the patient’s story is reflected in the record and working with clinicians to reduce extraneous documentation or unnecessary template artifact which detracts from the critical clinical content.
- Defend the record against payment denials, RAC audit exposure, and other compliance audit activity.
- Improve the case mix index
- Reduce unbilled accounts associated with incomplete documentation requiring retrospective queries.
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Improve clinical data capture which will provide a rich clinical repository from which to perform research, support quality improvement activities, and provide a targeted approach to focus on clinical specialties which require additional guidance and support.
2. Continue to invest in the training of your coders. Many organizations have only recently started to perform their gap analysis. If there is a delay this will enable you and your organization to assure that your coders have a solid base from which to expand their knowledge base. Start with the core training requirements related to anatomy, physiology, and patho-pharmacology, as well as opportunities to improve their understanding of coding system logic and principles. We recommend that you perform an ICD-10 coding review and analysis to assess the documentation and coding gaps and target the education and training strategy based on these findings.
3. Turn to Peak to extend your HIM and CDI department’s capacity as you gear up for the transition. We are there to assure you and your organization are successful as we move to ICD-10 as well as meeting the challenge presented by Stage II Meaningful Use.
Also for your reference, AHIMA prepared a print-ready downloadable PDF fact sheet on the importance of advocacy on ICD-10 implementation, Ten for 10: Top Ten Reasons We Need ICD-10 Now.
Peak is here to assist you in all of your HIM initiatives. Please don’t hesitate to contact us for advice on how we can assist you as you recalibrate your implementation roadmap.
Cassi Birnbaum, MS, RHIA, CPHQ
Vice President, HEALTH INFORMATION MANAGEMENT
THIMA
March 12, 2012 to March 14, 2012
Booth #16
Location
Park Vista Hotel
705 Cherokee Orchard Road
Gatlinburg, TN
Come visit with Chris Andersen, Peak’s Regional Sales Exeuctive during the THIMA 2012 Annual Meeting and 62nd Anniversary Celebration!
Chris will be in Booth 16 at the Park Vista Hotel in Gatlinburg, TN from March 12th – 14th. Drop by to say hello!
For more information on the THIMA Annual Meeting, please visit http://www.thima.org/THIMAAnnualMeeting.htm.
The 6th Annual RISE Summit
March 19, 2012 to March 21, 2012
Booth #TBD
Location
Nashville, TN
The Hilton Nashville Downtown
Bryan Lee, VP Product Developement will be sharing his insight on Day 2 of the RISE Summit in Nashville. Speaking on Concurrent Chart Reviews, Bryan will discuss moving from prospective to concurrent reviews, what it means to conduct them, timing and optimization of submission cycles and using concurrent reviews in preparing for encounter data submission.
Attending this meeting along with Bryan Lee, will be our CEO, Gabe Stein, Greg Lea – VP Client Services, Lou Steinberg – VP Sales and Lynne Padilla – Director HCC Coding.
Stop by our booth!
The event: The 6th Annual RISE Summit, March 19-21, 2012 at the Hilton Downtown Nashville.
