anesthesia professional coding for mckesson anesthesia care™

Anesthesia Professional Codingfor McKesson Anesthesia Care™

Benefits

– Maximize revenue with accurate comorbid conditiondocumentation

– Support documentation ofprocedures and diagnoses

– Increase revenue by improvingprofessional fee capture

– Save labor hours spent doingtime-consuming medicalrecord coding

– Improve anesthesiologists’financial health and satisfaction with healthcareorganization

– Save time spent dealing with rejected claims

co-morbidities brings in $7,301.081.1

Failure to charge patients forincreased levels of severity andchanges to their diagnostic related group stature is effectively giving away care — a proposition healthcare organizations can’t afford.

Improved Professional FeeCaptureBy permitting the start of continuous and discontinuous anesthesia time in pre-op and sign-off in PACU, the McKessonAnesthesia Care™ application provides an accurate record of ananesthesiologist’s beginning andend time. The AnesthesiaProfessional Coding module prevents the routine loss of billabletime on the front and back end ofevery case, increasing the anesthesiaprovider’s reimbursement as well asthe employing hospital’s revenue.Electronic data transfer of professional fee billing informationdramatically reduces the time spenttranscribing data and cuts the costsof paper storage and transmittal.

Increased Labor SavingsAccurate billing always begins at the point of care. AnesthesiaProfessional Coding improves the speed of the collection cycle by sending outbound charge capture directly to the healthcareorganization’s billing system at case closure. Without digital documentation, certified coders in Medical Records spend approximately three hours interpreting each chart.

While surgeons focus exclusively onthe surgical procedure at hand,anesthesiologists are charged withassembling a detailed portrait of the patients’ overall health. As theycreate each patient’s anesthesia planof care from pre-op to post-op,anesthesiologists are uniquely positioned to recoup the considerable revenue routinely lostto limited comorbid documentation.

McKesson’s Anesthesia ProfessionalCoding module is a sophisticatedcoding tool that assists with theanesthesiologist’s documentation ofa patient’s medical history, includingpre-existing physiologic conditions.Anesthesia Professional Coding utilizes five-digit codes to specifycomorbid conditions requiring ahigher level of care — such ashypertension, atrial fibrillation, congestive heart failure and gastricreflux disease. The resulting digital documentation provides a more accurate and thoroughcharge capture for quality professional care.

Accurate ComorbidDocumentation Inadequately documented comorbidconditions cost hospitals more thanthree times the dollars, per surgicalcase, lost to medication errors. For any given surgery, the financialdisparity between an event withdocumented comorbidities and anevent without is significant. Forexample, an appendectomy withdocumented comorbidities mightresult in a hospital reimbursementof $13,556.57, while the sameappendectomy without documented

Maximum Return on Investment In an independent study conductedwith the records of Medicare inpatients at an academic medicalcenter, use of McKesson’s AnesthesiaProfessional Coding module in anesthesiologists’ pre-op assessmentincreased revenues by $21.23 per surgical case — resulting in projected annual revenue of morethan $248,000. In addition, providing coders with a legible,organized summary of surgicalpatients’ comorbid conditionsamounted to $13.45 in labor savingsper surgical case — an annual savings of more than $157,000.2

1 Jerry Stonemetz, MD, “A Key Opportunity forReturn on Value: Capturing Comorbid ConditionDocumentation,” HCT Project, Volume 2, 7/17/2004.

2 Ibid.

Anesthesia Professional Codingreduces that time by more than athird, resulting in considerable labor savings and decreased overtime for both the MedicalRecords department and the anesthesiology group’s billing staff.

Protected Legal RecordDue to the unquestionable immediacy of information capturedwithin the electronic health record(EHR), the Anesthesia ProfessionalCoding module also reduces legalrisk. In court, the EHR protects anesthesiologists from those who might seek to impugn a handwritten medical record.

Copyright © 2007 McKesson Corporation and/or one of its subsidiaries. All rights reserved. McKessonAnesthesia Care is a trademark of McKesson Information Solutions LLC. All other product or company namesmentioned may be trademarks, service marks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.RMG103-09/07

Features

– Five-digit codes to specifycomorbid conditions

– An accurate record of an anesthesiologist’s beginning and end times

– Electronic data transfer ofprofessional fee billing information

McKesson Provider Technologies

5995 Windward ParkwayAlpharetta, GA 30005

http://www.mckesson.com1.800.981.8601

For More Information

For more information on the Anesthesia Professional Coding module andMcKesson Anesthesia Care, contact your client executive or call McKessonat 800-981-8601.