Inpatient psych
Is there any education for behavioral health documentation improvement? Our short term inpatient behavioral health facility has had some denials by payers because the principal diagnosis is a medical diagnosis and not a psych diagnosis? We have been denied entire visits. I tend to think this is documentation related. Any advice?
Comments
Good Morning,
I found this conference presentation from 2014 on the topic. I haven't previewed it, but I hope it will help you. It's "funny" that in Psych they are denying medical dx's as the PDX and in Medicine they are denying Psych dx's as PDX.
I think denials is all a big game that the payors play with us. We did find that we were having patients with anorexia or bulimia admitted to inpatient medical services and sometimes coding was using that as the PDX when the true PDX was an acute medical issue like hypokalemia that needed replacement and telemetry or a severely autistic child that has been refusing to eat and lost a good bit of weight who is actually admitted for FTT or malnutrition.
Is it an actual medical dx that is occasioning the admission to your inpatient behavioral unit?
Jeff