nyyankees
True Blue
anyone have any info on CACs? We have 2 facilities (in my area) that is incorporating this in place of coders. Epic, the EHR we have, is the system. Curious..
My experience of traveling around the country and auditing at facilities that replaced coders years ago with Epic and other 'need not a coder' programs is the following. After RAC audits and request for overpayments started coming into these facilities, they are hiring back coders and auditors to review the codes that are selected from these systems or in Epic's case, codes that are selected from the providers. What a coding program cannot do is decipher the correct modifiers 100 percent of the time which can lead to takebacks if not careful. It also cannot decipher a correct E & M level based on the documentation. Epic I know for sure, did a great marketing strategy of selling their program based on the fact that the provider can perform his own coding and coders can be replaced. This has lead to detrimental recovery effects for facilities, but great business for auditors. What these IT software companies forgot to include was the professional opinions of coders when implementing this software. Now they are getting on board with the program if I may, and are including more coding professionals in their implementation EHR/EMR.