Artificial intelligence (AI) has quickly transitioned from something to expect in the future to the here and now today. The potential for AI in health information is both exciting and daunting. Reporting the lead story during the next live edition of Talk Ten Tuesday will be longtime RACmonitor and ICD10monitor contributing author Sharon Easterling. Sharon Easterling is slated to create an editorial series on artificial intelligence. Her report on this topic will be a preview of what readers and...
Jul 08, 2025•33 min•Season 14Ep. 651
As state laws, federal regulations, and insurance policies continue to evolve, healthcare organizations face growing demands to ensure that gender-affirming care is appropriately documented and reported. Reporting on these serious coding challenges and the dire consequences of failing to achieve compliance during the next edition of Talk Ten Tuesdays will be senior healthcare consultant Penny Jefferson, the special guest for the broadcast coming up at 10 a.m. EST on Tuesday, July 1. The popular ...
Jul 01, 2025•30 min•Season 14Ep. 650
Your pets might be doing more than just keeping you company. They could be reshaping your immune system. Early exposure to pets, especially in childhood, may reduce allergies and asthma by diversifying gut bacteria and strengthening immunity, according to Dr. Nick van Terheyden, director of Incremental Health. Dr. Nick is scheduled to be the special guest during the next live edition of Talk Ten Tuesdays, coming up at 10 a.m. EST on Tuesday, June 24. The popular Internet broadcast will feature t...
Jun 24, 2025•24 min•Season 14Ep. 649
Could physician advisors become dinosaurs in healthcare, bound for extinction? The role of the physician advisor has developed into an absolute necessity in hospitals of all sizes around the country. As the healthcare landscape rapidly evolves, physician advisors have served as critical players, bridging the gap between confusion and clarity within clinical and administrative functions. Yet, the question remains unanswered: why are only a fraction of physician advisors employed as full-time empl...
Jun 17, 2025•31 min
One of the largest regional coding organizations in America’s healthcare universe – the California Health Information Association (CHIA) – wrapped its final workshops this past week, with delegates flying home to share their insights on what was considered to be a pivotal experience. The ICD10monitor producers of Talk Ten Tuesdays have secured a rare appearance of CHIA’s past president, Gloryanne Byrant, who agreed to share five key takeaways from the annual conference. During the next live edit...
Jun 10, 2025•35 min•Season 14Ep. 647
The national conference of the largest regional coding organization chapters in America’s healthcare universe gets underway this weekend – and James S. Kennedy, MD, will be there. Dr. Kennedy, president of CDIMD, a national coding and clinical documentation integrity (CDI) consultancy, will be reporting on major events taking place at the California Health Information Association (CHIA) conference, starting this weekend in Southern California. As a longtime editorial contributor to RACmonitor an...
Jun 03, 2025•30 min•Season 14Ep. 646
UnitedHealth Group (UHG) stock is plummeting following the abrupt resignation of its CEO Andrew Witty. His sudden departure, coming on Tuesday, May 13, came amid multiple lawsuits and threatened actions by private, state, and federal agencies across the country, and amid massive criticism for the company’s tendency to deny beneficiaries coverage for services at elevated rates. Witty’s exit from the giant payer – a long-time dominant force related to revenue cycle, provider staffing, utilization,...
May 20, 2025•29 min•Season 14Ep. 645
Radiology reports are rich in clinical detail, yet ICD-10 codes often fail to fully capture the complexity and specificity of imaging findings. That is why the producers of Talk Ten Tuesdays and ICD10monitor have invited Laura Manser to explore the most common disconnects between radiology documentation and ICD-10 coding – especially in areas like incidental findings, laterality, and linking imaging results to medical necessity. During the next edition of the weekly broadcast, Manser is also exp...
May 13, 2025•26 min•Season 14Ep. 644
The revenue cycle can be thought of as a machine that keeps churning nonstop, making everything work, financially speaking, for your hospital. But even the most well-oiled machinery can get clogged, meaning it doesn’t perform at its peak. And that is why the producers of ICD10monitor and Talk Ten Tuesdays have invited Jessica Miller-Dobbs to join the popular Internet broadcast as its special guest for some shop talk. Jessica is the Director of Health Information Management (HIM) and Revenue Cycl...
May 06, 2025•27 min•Season 14Ep. 643
Payer edits and denials are pervasive in healthcare reimbursement. These problems typically arise from coding inaccuracies, insufficient documentation, or non-compliance with payer-specific guidelines. These challenges can lead to revenue loss, increased administrative burden, and frustration among healthcare providers. A skilled coding staff plays a vital role in mitigating these issues. Proactive identification of potential red flags at the time of coding can decrease the number of edits and d...
Apr 29, 2025•30 min•Season 14Ep. 642
Custodial and social hospitalizations have long been a hospital challenge. From inadequate patient support and services to medically unwarranted occupancy of inpatient beds, plus lack of payment for provision of care, prevention and management of these cases continues to be an issue. While much has been discussed about how to proceed, many hospitals fail. And that is why the producers of ICD10monitor and Talk Ten Tuesday have invited Dr. Juliet B. Ugarte Hopkins to be the special guest during th...
Apr 22, 2025•31 min•Season 14Ep. 641
In today’s healthcare environment, America’s hospitals are experiencing increases in payer denials as a result of incorrect application of drug HCPCS units and a drug HCPCS modifier (JW/JZ). These denials have increased costs for providers, because the existing staff is either being redirected to spend more time on the issue or additional staff are being hired to resolve the drug charge denials. Healthcare industry professionals need an easy-to-use and cost-effective resource to submit their cla...
Apr 15, 2025•30 min•Season 14Ep. 640
Effective communication is a critical skill in navigating clinical and non-clinical interactions to avoid disaster striking a facility’s bottom line. In fact, poor communication directly impacts the bottom line. Today, amid a cacophony of competing and complex issues spanning generations and a range of viewpoints, there is an overarching need to foster collaboration. During the next live edition of Talk Ten Tuesday, Lorie Mills, director of health services for Primeau Consulting Group, will repo...
Apr 08, 2025•36 min•Season 14Ep. 639
World Health Day, which will be officially observed on Monday, April 7, will mark what organizers claim will be a year-long celebration. Here at ICD10monitor and Talk Ten Tuesdays, we will celebrate a bit early, during the next edition of the Talk Ten Tuesdays live Internet broadcast. Headlining the broadcast will be Lorraine Fernandes, immediate past president and communications chair of the International Health Information Management Association. This year’s World Health Day theme focuses on e...
Apr 01, 2025•30 min•Season 14Ep. 638
National Doctors’ Day is Sunday, March 30. Even though the national one-day observance is only a few days away, the ICD10monitor producers of Talk Ten Tuesdays want to ensure that everyone is aware of the significant contributions made daily by America’s doctors. Hence, our recognition of the occasion will continue during the next live edition of the popular weekly Internet broadcast. As part of the celebration, physician and attorney Dr. John K. Hall has been invited to be the special guest on ...
Mar 25, 2025•30 min•Season 14Ep. 637
Time is money. And nowhere is that adage more relevant than in today’s American hospitals. For example, consider the patient who is medically ready for discharge, but still waiting for a skilled nursing facility (SNF) bed to open up. Or the case in which a patient might medically require a cardiac catheterization before being safely cleared to discharge to home, but there’s a delay until the procedure can be performed on Monday. So, when is it okay to delay? Answering that question as well as re...
Mar 18, 2025•29 min•Season 14Ep. 636
Overwhelmed by nutrition advice? You’re not alone. From sketchy influencer “secrets” to Big Food’s algorithm-driven traps, a myriad of pitfalls means making healthy choices has never been harder. Questions abound: should you go all-in on the potato diet? Or embrace the all-meat life? (Spoiler: probably not.) This week, during the long-running and popular Talk Ten Tuesdays Internet broadcast produced by ICD10monitor, Dr. Nick van Terheyden will cut through the noise – breaking down diet fads, ind...
Mar 11, 2025•31 min•Season 14Ep. 635
Overwhelmed by nutrition advice? You’re not alone. From sketchy influencer “secrets” to Big Food’s algorithm-driven traps, a myriad of pitfalls means making healthy choices has never been harder. Questions abound: should you go all-in on the potato diet? Or embrace the all-meat life? (Spoiler: probably not.) This week, during the long-running and popular Talk Ten Tuesdays Internet broadcast produced by ICD10monitor, Dr. Nick van Terheyden will cut through the noise – breaking down diet fads, ind...
Mar 04, 2025•30 min•Season 14Ep. 634
Overwhelmed by nutrition advice? You’re not alone. From sketchy influencer “secrets” to Big Food’s algorithm-driven traps, a myriad of pitfalls means making healthy choices has never been harder. Questions abound: should you go all-in on the potato diet? Or embrace the all-meat life? (Spoiler: probably not.) This week, during the long-running and popular Talk Ten Tuesdays Internet broadcast produced by ICD10monitor, Dr. Nick van Terheyden will cut through the noise – breaking down diet fads, ind...
Feb 25, 2025•26 min•Season 14Ep. 633
Discharge orders have evolved. Today, they indicate the end of hospital billing for an encounter. However, when the discharge order is placed on a day other than the day a patient actually leaves the hospital, it can often lead to under-reporting the patient’s length of stay (LOS) and other issues. And when some clinicians are told to place such an order when patients are medically ready to leave – even if there is no safe discharge plan – this forces the team to make the tough decision: to disc...
Feb 18, 2025•30 min•Season 14Ep. 632
Could generative artificial intelligence (AI) revolutionize healthcare, or is it just a risky trend? During the next must-see live broadcast of Talk Ten Tuesdays, Dr. Christopher Boyle will walk you through the potential and pitfalls of generative AI. His journey will take you on an exploration of three promising uses of AI that focus on safety, documentation, and coding accuracy. You’ll learn how you can balance the benefits of AI while ensuring compliance. Dr. Boyle will also report on how AI ...
Feb 11, 2025•31 min•Season 14Ep. 631
When a law enforcement officer comes to your facility, what do you need to know? And what should you do? While until recently, this topic was seldom on the top of lists of healthcare issues, a recent move by the Trump Administration (Executive Order) appears to have revoked a longstanding policy that prevented federal law enforcement agents (U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement) from going to certain areas long considered safe – think hospitals and schools – to conduct enforcement activities....
Feb 04, 2025•31 min•Season 14Ep. 630
It could be the shot heard ‘round the world: the announcement recently of Stargate, a multi-billion-dollar artificial intelligence (AI) project now underway in the U.S. and backed by huge corporations, including Oracle, Open AI, and SoftBank, among others. But what will be the impact on healthcare, and notably, health information management (HIM) professionals? Reporting on this huge healthcare issue during the next edition of Talk Ten Tuesdays will be the legendary Rose Dunn. Dunn, who served a...
Jan 28, 2025•30 min•Season 14Ep. 629
Looking to unravel healthcare’s complex issues? Looking to streamline your operations and improve decision-making? Join us this coming Tuesday, Jan. 14 at 10 a.m. EST, when the long-running Talk Ten Tuesdays kicks off its 2025 broadcast season with special guest Frank Cohen, senior director of analytics for VMG Health. Cohen will share his insight on Hanlon’s Razor, a principle that can be summarized as “never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence.” This prin...
Jan 14, 2025•31 min•Season 13Ep. 628
We’re living in a hybrid world. And now the hybrid concept has become part of the coding and clinical documentation integrity (CDI) world. The process of physician querying is already a stressful activity for many CDI and coding professionals. It has recently become even more stressful, because many hospitals are receiving a new type of denial: a hybrid between coding and clinical validation. It arises when a payer denies a diagnosis added by query, because their auditor determined that the quer...
Dec 17, 2024•58 min
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) measures and, in some cases, penalizes facilities whose inpatient mortality or readmission (up to 3 per cent of their traditional Medicare revenue) rates for pneumonia, heart failure, acute myocardial infarction, and other conditions exceed their established benchmarks. Since these measures are based solely on ICD-10-CM/PCS-based administrative data applied to algorithms developed by Yale University, inaccurate documentation and coding can unw...
Dec 03, 2024•30 min•Season 13Ep. 625
Even savvy dentists tend to find a challenge in boosting their reimbursements by correctly coding procedures as medical claims instead of dental ones. During the next live edition of Talk Ten Tuesdays, Jeff Holt will report on the benefits of this strategy, including common pitfalls that make dentists want to pull their hair out. You’ll discover that the benefits of having top-notch coders and cutting-edge tech is like finding the Holy Grail. Also part of the broadcast will be these instantly re...
Nov 26, 2024•31 min•Season 13Ep. 623
He was enthralling as he explained his revolutionary technology that empowers healthcare professionals to make crucial decisions in real time that improve patient care. Dr. Gerasimos Petratos, founder and CEO for HITEKS, had successfully automated the tenuous physician query process. In our continuing series of technical reporting, “Healthcare Technology,” the producers of ICD10monitor and Talk Ten Tuesdays have invited Dr. Petratos to be the special guest during the next live edition of the wee...
Nov 19, 2024•29 min•Season 13Ep. 623
In the wake of last Tuesday’s Presidential Election, the producers of ICD10monitor and Talk Ten Tuesdays have invited world-renowned psychiatrist H. Steven Moffic, MD to analyze America’s collective psyche. As in all election outcomes, there were losers and winners. Yet how we, as Americans, manifest these feelings will be the essence of the next live edition of the popular and long-running Internet radio program. Also part of the broadcast will be these instantly recognizable panelists, who wil...
Nov 12, 2024•31 min•Season 13Ep. 622
Feeling parched? Well, you’re not alone. Hospitals across the country are dealing with a saline shortage. Thanks to Hurricane Helene’s unwelcome visit to the Baxter International facility in North Carolina, your IV bags may be running low. Imagine a busy highway suddenly reduced to a single lane: that’s what this IV shortage feels like for impacted healthcare providers. During the next live edition of the long-running and popular live Internet radio program Talk Ten Tuesday, Dr. Nick van Terheyd...
Nov 05, 2024•27 min•Season 13Ep. 621
