A Top-Down vs. Bottom-Up Approach to Severity Reporting

Since the inception of Clinical Documentation Integrity as an initiative at acute care hospitals, the scope and approach have evolved over the years to meet the increased demand for accurate severity reporting in healthcare. Some of the ways that programs have evolved include:

Moving from Medicare-only reviews to all payor reviews
CC/MCC queries only to SOI, ROM, HCC, and other risk adjustment condition queries
Leveraging technology to improve workflow efficiency
Quality-related reviews for patient safety indicators and Hospital Acquired conditions

While there are many other factors and variations of how programs have evolved over the years, there appears to be common theme of a bottom-up approach to severity reporting. There is nothing wrong with that except that our ability to impact severity reporting data at the population level, versus that of just the patients confined within the scope of the program, is hindered.

Learn from our expert

Dr. Terrance Govender

VP of Medical Affairs

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