A Message from Dr. Vicente Resto, Chief Physician Executive and Senior Vice President for Health System Ambulatory Operations and Surgical Services, and Emily Goertz, Vice President for Revenue Cycle Operations
Dear Colleagues,
We continue to streamline our Epic-based functionality, targeting an improved physician experience and ensuring we accomplish our documentation and revenue goals. In support of these goals, we are pleased to announce an update and improvement to the functionality of the Post-Op MD Navigator tool, effective Thursday, Dec. 7. The change will affect all OR locations including Labor and Delivery, Cath/EP Labs, and all Endoscopy areas for the system.
Appropriate coding is important for accurate case scheduling and pre-certification approval by insurance companies. Variability is to be expected; however, CPT codes performed that were not anticipated or otherwise omitted from the pre-certification details need to be captured post-procedure. This is critical to avoid non-payment and extensive reworking of insurance denials.
Critically important, the update must be reported within 24 hours of case completion. For this reason, we have developed functionality that allows our proceduralists to update their codes immediately upon completion of the case. Once complete, the case routes appropriately to be updated before the 24-hour mark.
A workflow document and brief educational video are included in this email. These review changes in detail. Additionally, we are providing educational support via a new UTMB Coding Resource (powered by 3M) located on all our institutional desktops as well as accessible within Epic’s Post-Op MD Navigator. We will continue to develop more education and coding support functions going forward.