By Penny Richards

From the “Oh, no!” files, here’s a story about a Certified Clinical Documentation Specialist (CCDS) exam candidate who missed the exam because he went to the wrong address. The candidate scheduled his test in a large city that just happens to have two H&R Block offices on the same street. He went to the wrong office.

The nice people in the wrong office gave him a note that explained he had arrived on time, albeit to the wrong office. He got into his car and headed up (down?) the same street to the correct office, but arrived late. Exam policy states that late candidates are not permitted to enter and the H&R Block staff had to abide by that policy.

Q: Is it a coder’s responsibility to properly sequence secondary diagnoses or is this a process that happens when the codes are transferred to the super bill? My concern is with making sure that heavily weighted secondary diagnoses which affect SOI/ROM and HCCs are not making it to the bill, which could result in reduction of risk adjustment and quality stratification for our health system. What is considered “industry norm” for this process?

Cecilia Guardiola, RN, resigned from her position as corporate director of CDI after three months over concerns that Banner Health seemed to be billing Medicare improperly.

CMS’ quality measures for bundled payments fail to adequately measure the quality of healthcare, researchers at Johns Hopkins wrote in a recent editorial.

More than half of the $13.8 million in Medicare telehealth payments examined by federal auditors fell short of reporting requirements.

The cutoff date for the Hyatt Regency San Antonio Riverwalk, Hilton Palacio Del Rio is tomorrow, April 20. La Quinta Inn & Suites extended its early bird cutoff to Friday, April 27.

For the many hours of work and dedication, on behalf of the ACDIS membership and the CDI community, we want to say thank you to the members of all our boards and committees.

This week, ACDIS Associate Editorial Director Melissa Varnavas and CCDS Coordinator Penny Richards sat down in front of the camera to answer one of the most frequently asked CCDS question: How to apply for CCDS CEUs for a local chapter event.

ACDIS received an email from a member asking what the most common queried diagnoses are among CDI professionals. While we didn’t have the answer immediately, ACDIS ran a poll probing that exact question.