Cathy oversees clinical and professional services for Net Health. Cathy gained over 25 years of expertise in various acute care, long-term care, sub-acute care facilities, home-health agencies, and outpatient wound care department settings. She is the author of The Clinical Wound Manager™ Manual Series, Clinical Guide to Skin and Wound Care – Seventh Edition (also translated into Italian and Portuguese).
The end of the year is a perfect time to reflect on processes implemented in the past year and look forward to improving processes in the new year. One key process is workflow optimization. Workflow is a set of chronological, organized processes and tasks designed to efficiently meet a goal through interaction with people and…
This year’s SAWC fall meeting is November 2-4 in Las Vegas, Nevada at Caesar’s Palace, and I’m excited about this year’s speakers and their presentations. While having the opportunity to learn during sessions, remember, learning continues in the Exhibit Hall and during the Poster Presentations. Explore the skin and wound care products in the Exhibit…
Reporting your 2018 Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) documentation is just around the corner. This column reviews the documentation requirements and data validation and audit criteria. This checklist is not exhaustive. Ultimately, it remains your responsibility to create your own audit checklist to meet your practice needs. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)…
The goal of wound care documentation is to provide the highest possible degree of clinical specificity to ensure accurate interventions and diagnosis as well as to adequately demonstrate medical necessity for the services rendered and substantiate the billed services. Let’s review components of skin and wound documentation that may comprise your medical record. Wound Documentation:…
Clinical decision making for wound management is dependent on the types of patients evaluated in your care settings, the skill sets of the clinicians making the decisions for those patients, the products available to manage the patient, and the documentation platform used to capture the work performed. Essentially, every step along the patient engagement continuum…
In continuing our efforts to understand the most important aspects of the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS), this month’s installment of Practice Points reviews the intent and reporting process for “Information Blocking.” Guidance for this column was found within the QPP Fact Sheet entitled “The Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) Advancing Care Information Prevention of Information Blocking…
In case you missed it, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services1 updated the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) Fact Sheets mid-May 2018. Let’s take a look at the criteria for each MIPS category. Remember, documentation details determine your dollars. MIPS Participation Status Includes eligible clinicians or groups who bill more than $90,000 in Medicare Part…
Last month’s column discussed the importance of workflows needing to be defined, reviewed, and refined. In this column, we will review how wound care regulations tie to your workflow. Within the wound care department, procedures are common. The type of procedure varies based on the patient’s wound chronicity and healing trajectory. In an outpatient wound…
Workflow design is a key step in your department’s clinical and operational efficiencies. Workflows enhance healthcare quality and safety, patient throughput, and care coordination. These steps occur from the moment the patient contacts the department through patient discharge. Workflows need to be defined, reviewed and refined as roles in the department change, medical record requirements…
