AIS's Health Business Daily

July 2, 2009

Today's Featured Story

ICD-10 Will Reduce Payment Errors and Claims Denials, but Will Also Help Fraud Investigators Reprinted from REPORT ON MEDICARE COMPLIANCE

Payment errors should be reduced significantly under ICD-10 diagnosis and procedure codes, which must be implemented by Oct. 1, 2013. Experts say that improvements over ICD-9 — including less ambiguity, more specificity, standardized terminology and combination codes — will help hospitals improve their compliance. But at the same time, fraud investigators may also benefit from ICD-10 when it's deployed with electronic anti-fraud tools....Read Full Story

Quote of the Day

"...with the False Claims Act I and II, deciding not to investigate your Stark [physician self-referral] compliance could be to your detriment. In a typical hospital, you will find 200 to 500 financial relationships and nonmonetary compensation relationships that must meet Stark and it is a paper chase trying to determine when they begin, end and are modified. If you believe violations occurred, you need to figure out how so you can put in process changes to prevent violations from occurring again....You will find financial arrangements where payments being made are not consistent with written agreements."

— Bob Wade, with law firm Baker & Daniels in South Bend, Ind., told AIS's REPORT ON MEDICARE COMPLIANCE.

Buy the issue of REPORT ON MEDICARE COMPLIANCE in which this quote appeared (PDF transmitted immediately)

Today's Datapoint

People on the Move

Rockwell Medical Technologies, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company, appointed Ajay Gupta, M.D., chief scientific officer. Gupta was associate professor of medicine at the UCLA and Charles Drew University Schools of Medicine in Los Angeles.…The American Diabetes Assn. named David M. Kendall, M.D., chief scientific and medical officer, effective Sept. 21. Kendall is medical director and chief of clinical and professional services at the International Diabetes Center in Minneapolis. He will succeed Richard Kahn.

Today's Featured Health Business Job Opening

Blue Shield of California
Medical Director, Network Medical Management
El Dorado Hills, Calif.

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