3M™ Advanced Analyzer Software Helps Hospitals Transition to New Medicare Payment System
Salt Lake City, Utah (Oct. 8, 2007)- 3M Health Information Systems has upgraded its 3M Advanced Analyzer Software with new expert content that supports coding and reimbursement under Medicare's new severity-adjusted payment system, launched by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) on Oct. 1, 2007. The enhanced software helps hospital coders and documentation specialists accurately account for patient severity of illness when coding Medicare-Severity DRGs (MS-DRGs).
3M Advanced Analyzer Software helps hospitals address the complexities of coding for severity. "Accurate reimbursement under MS-DRGs depends on a careful and in-depth review of the patient record documentation," said Tom Anastasio, senior vice president, provider markets for 3M Health Information Systems. "With 3M Advanced Analyzer Software, coders can be confident they are capturing the right information and coding precisely for proper reimbursement."
3M Advanced Analyzer Software works in conjunction with the 3M™ Coding and Reimbursement System to efficiently analyze the coding process, helping coders uncover additional secondary diagnoses in the physician documentation that may have been overlooked. The software prompts the coder to investigate clinical conditions that should be coded with greater specificity, not only for accurate reimbursement, but also to achieve a better understanding of the clinical complexity of the hospital's patient mix.
By evaluating codes submitted by the coder, along with patient attributes such as gender and age, risk factors, conditions, and symptoms, the software identifies conditions that can impact the patient's Severity of Illness (SOI) and Risk of Mortality (ROM) assignment. The result is more accurate performance reports to support documentation improvement programs or public reporting of hospital outcomes.
"Research shows that hospitals under-report patient severity of illness and risk of mortality by as much as 25 percent," Anastasio said. "As more comparative information on hospital performance becomes available to the public, it is critically important for an organization to make sure its performance data is adjusted to account for patient severity and risk of mortality."
3M Advanced Analyzer Software is an add-on module of the 3M Coding and Reimbursement System, the healthcare industry's leading encoding system, which is used in more than 5,000 healthcare settings worldwide by Health Information Management (HIM) departments to code and group patient data for decision support, quality measurement, and reimbursement.
More information about 3M Advanced Analyzer Software is available at www.3Mhis.com or by calling 800-367-2447.
About 3M Health Information Systems
3M Health Information Systems is the worldwide expert in healthcare funding and performance management solutions. Built on nearly 25 years of experience delivering superior coding, grouping and abstracting products, 3M Health Information Systems provides solutions that can help enhance healthcare operations, shorten revenue cycle times, improve patient care and achieve an electronic medical record (EMR). 3M Health Information Systems is part of 3M Health Care, one of 3M's six major business segments. 3M Health Care provides world-class innovative products and services to help healthcare professionals improve the practice, delivery and outcome of patient care in medical, oral care, drug delivery, and health information markets.
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