Find Out Why Physicians Undercode.
For today’s Compliance Conversations podcast, I spoke with Dr. Ira Specter, who spent years as a practicing OBGYN before going on to run his own medical management company, where they did billing collection, coding, compliance, and ICD-10 courses for physicians. Because of his unique perspective, we tackled bridging the gap between coding and auditing and physician documentation.
When asked what the biggest area for improvement for physician documentation is Dr. Specter said, “Let me start by saying, by and large, most physicians are under coding...If you look at what physicians do, if you take the amount of work a physician puts into seeing a patient, I’m sure there are exceptions, but most of the time physicians want to take good care of their patients. So, they put the time in, they put the effort in, they put all their education behind it. So, the level of care is usually very high. Now, what happens is, the level of documentation seems to be lower.”
It seems, according to Dr. Specter, that physicians are “cutting off their own legs,” and also “cherry picking” codes. What does that mean?
Tune into our recent episode of Compliance Conversations: The Psychology Behind Why Physicians Undercode, to find out what Dr. Specter views as the biggest mistakes physicians are currently making and learn:
- How You Can Help Keep Physicians from Undercoding
- What Coders and Auditors Should Look for in Physician Documentation
- The Pitfalls of Copying and Cloning
Interested in being a guest on the show? Email CJ directly here.