Solve Diabetes Coding Challenges in Your Doctor’s Office

Your Expert Presenter:
Jo Ann Steigerwald, RHIT, ACS-GI, ACS-OH Jo Ann is a coding veteran with 25+ years of experience as a consultant and trainer in medical coding, billing and documentation. As a consultant with Medical Business Specialists, Baraboo, Wis., Jo Ann provides onsite, custom training and consulting services on coding, documentation, fraud and abuse, compliance and medical records management. She previously worked for both state and regional medical associations developing and providing consulting on reimbursement, collections and records management. Jo Ann serves on the Advisory Board to the Board of Medical Specialty Coding, is technical advisor to the Coder's Pink Sheets and is a frequent national speaker on a variety of coding/billing topics.
Who Should Attend
This conference benefits a wide variety of health care professionals. Billing and coding staff Physicians and non-physician practitioners Practice administrators & executives Front office staff Compliance officers Consultants There is no limit to the number of staff from your office who can participate. One registration fee lets your entire staff listen in via speakerphone! Save money — no travel expenses!

Nearly 10% of the total U.S. population has diabetes – and that number increases to more than 20% when looking at people who are 60 and older, according to statistics from the National Diabetes Information Clearinghouse. And its prevalence is exploding: Those diagnosed with diabetes in the United States will increase 165% by 2050, projects the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

That means an increased number of diabetes patients stepping through your practice doors. But keep using the familiar “stand-by” diagnosis code 250.00 and you risk payer delays, down-coding and denials with ever-growing frequency. Let coding expert Jo Ann Steigerwald, president of Medical Business Specialists, Baraboo, Wis., give you some simple documentation tips and coding rules to help you file timely, clean claims for your diabetes patients.

Attend the audioconference, “Solve Diabetes Coding Challenges in Your Doctor’s Office,” on Thursday, September 27, 2007, at 1:00-2:00 pm ET. Steigerwald will cover all the bases when it comes to coding for diabetes in the physician office, including:

How to code for Medicare’s diabetes self-management training (DSMT) benefit.
Why the terms “controlled” and “uncontrolled” are so important to coding -- and how to document those terms correctly.
How to successfully code underlying and related diseases. (Hint: Proper documentation of some causal relationships is key. It’s not tough – but it must be done right.)
Why the more non-specific diabetes ICD-9-CM codes will cause your claims to deny. It all revolves around frequency limits.
What complications you should scour the note to find.
How to properly sequence complications when more than one is listed in the medical record. There’s more than just correct coding at stake here; an improper sequence could mean the difference between your payer recognizing and paying on complications – or not.

The diabetes and its complications are serious. You can’t afford for your growing number of diabetes patients to hit incorrect frequency limits for visits or lab tests. Jo Ann gives you what you need to know to code diabetes claims correctly, resulting in fewer frequency-limit denials for your patients and correct reimbursement for your office.

Sponsors:

To find out about upcoming conferences and for a complete listing of CDs, please visit www.decisionhealth.com.

One registration fee lets your entire staff listen in! Save money - no travel expenses!