Gwinnett Health Contracts for Computer-Assisted Coding Solution

Gwinnett Health System, Lawrenceville, Ga, has contracted to use an advanced coding solution from Ingenix and A-Life Medical Inc. to help process its growing volume of medical claims, improve coding accuracy and reduce administrative costs.

 

Gwinnett Health System includes two acute-care facilities, an inpatient rehabilitation center and a skilled nursing facility.  As the health system provides medical care to more patients, its claims administration workload and expenses are increasing.

 

Ingenix has combined its Web.Strat encoding tool with A-Life Medical’s computer-assisted coding technology to help health care facilities like Gwinnett improve claim coding accuracy, increase staff productivity and control administrative costs.

 

The solution is supported by LifeCode®, a proprietary natural language processing system that automates the reading of clinical documentation, deciphers the meaning and context of words within medical records and recommends the appropriate codes. Medical coding staff at Gwinnett Health System can then either confirm the suggested codes or conduct additional research to validate them.

 

“The solution from Ingenix and A-Life Medical will enable us to manage our growing volume of medical claims much more efficiently,” said Carol Fowler, Gwinnett Health System director of health information management. “In addition to helping us resolve serious business and resource challenges, these technologies will be an integral foundation for impending regulatory and performance management initiatives.”

 

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will require all health care organizations to transition to coding medical transactions with the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems 10th Revision (ICD-10) by Oct. 1, 2013. The new index replaces ICD-9, which included approximately 17,000 medical codes, with a significantly expanded and more highly detailed taxonomy of more than 155,000 codes.

 

CMS is implementing ICD-10 to support better analysis of medical conditions and health care quality improvement efforts; however, the dramatic expansion of potential codes stands to make medical coding workflows more complex and time-consuming. Advanced coding solutions from Ingenix and A-Life Medical will enable Gwinnett to manage increased coding demands without expanding its administrative staff.