20th Annual
Home Health Coding Summit

Join us as we celebrate and honor home care professionals who have demonstrated a commitment to excellence. All AHCC Achievement Award winners have made measurable improvements in their organization and have gone above and beyond to advance the interests and best practices of the industry.

Get a high-level overview of all the key code and guidance changes that will impact your home health coding starting October 1, 2023. Also get an update on PDGM, OASIS, Review Choice Demonstration (RCD), and other regulatory changes that will affect your coding and QA.

Avoid ADRs and post-payment reviews to get claims paid. Learn strategies from agencies that have participated in the RCD on how to conduct effective self-assessments to spotlight coverage criteria and ensure your claim has everything needed to stand up against any kind of government review. Examine the five most common reasons for non-affirmation of pre-claim reviews and what can be learned from these errors.

This track is intended for coders who have been coding in home health for at least one year and either plan to sit for their HCS-D credential immediately following the conference or have become credentialed in the past year. This track is also appropriate for coders who have completed the Ultimate Training Coding Basics course.

In FY2023, 83 new codes were added to Chapter 5 (Mental, Behavioral and Neurodevelopmental disorders [F01-F99]). Of those, 69 codes further identify the stage of severity and behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD). Learn how to properly assign codes for depression, dementia, Parkinson’s disease, and Alzheimer’s disease while taking a deep dive into expanded categories F01.-, F02.-, and F03.-, as well as the specific documentation required to identify severity and behaviors.

Cover the most complex coding challenges related to fractures, joint replacements, transplants, and failures. You’ll learn the ins and outs of when to use Z48.0- (Encounter for dressings, sutures and drains) versus Z47.- (Encounter for other ortho care) to avoid upcoding charges. Plus, you’ll recognize the importance of learning why and where it broke, when it’s trauma versus pathology, how to handle joint replacements that go right and those that don’t, and how to correctly identify when it’s a complication.

Learn how to properly code CVAs and sequelae, heart failure, hypertension with CKD, secondary hypertension, MI, exacerbated COPD, and pneumonia. Then, delve into the challenges that coders face when coding COVID-19 and get tips for how to handle its long-term sequelae.

This track is intended for experienced HCS-D certified coders with three or more years in home health coding who consider themselves experts. It’s also appropriate for experienced QA/QI staff who are dual-certified (HCS-D, HCS-O) or want to become dual-certified.

Walk through updates to official OASIS guidance, including the Q&As. Plus, find out what OASIS changes are coming down the pike and what you’ll need to know to keep consistency between the OASIS and coding. Get best practices on how to reconcile a diagnosis that contradicts the OASIS/documentation, and how to resolve disagreements between the coder and clinician on diagnosis assignment. Finally, go over each person’s role and responsibilities when it comes to assigning diagnoses.

Take a deep dive into coding’s impact on PDGM and the calculation of payments. Review how unacceptable codes, primary diagnosis designations, and comorbidity listings have been impacting payments under PDGM, and what you need from the documentation to get to the right code. Learn how to manage the challenging symptom codes (i.e., muscle weakness) that lead to questionable encounters.

Discover new ways to make coders’ and clinicians’ training fun and interactive. Learn how to connect coders and clinicians, make them feel appreciated, and train with limited resources and time.

This track is intended for coders who have been coding in home health for at least one year and either plan to sit for their HCS-D credential immediately following the conference or have become credentialed in the past year. This track is also appropriate for coders who have completed the Ultimate Training Coding Basics course.

Please submit your most challenging and difficult scenario(s) and our experts will work through them during the afternoon Interactive Coding session. You must submit your questions to MHerr@decisionhealth.com by June 1, 2023.

Not only is wound coding and documentation a constant source of confusion, but it also attracts intense scrutiny from auditors, resulting in severe financial penalties for mistakes. Work through the haze and find the right pressure ulcer codes by learning how to distinguish between what stage the clinician has documented vs. what the rest of the documentation is describing. Then move on to the keys of properly coding burns, skin irritations, lesions, drains, and ostomies.

Get the latest guidance on how to differentiate between and properly code diabetic, stasis, and arterial ulcers. Work through scenarios to find the right code. Bonus: Get the keys to properly coding diabetes and its manifestations while reviewing the “with” convention.

Work through patient scenarios to learn how to code complicated surgical and trauma wounds. This session will cover the proper coding of wounds that have experienced delayed healing, delayed treatment, dehiscence, and/or infection. Then move on to trauma wounds such as cuts, lacerations, and puncture wounds. Understand the differences in coding skin tears vs. trauma wounds vs. surgical wounds.

Work at a steady pace through common home health scenarios that trip up even the most experienced coders while focusing on cases that reinforce key coding rules. The disease topics that will be covered include signs and symptoms, sequelae, infections, sepsis, neoplasms, anemia, and more.

Get tips and strategies to help you prepare for the Home Care Coding Specialist – Diagnosis (HCS-D) certification exam.

This track is intended for experienced HCS-D certified coders with three or more years in home health coding who consider themselves experts. It’s also appropriate for experienced QA/QI staff who are dual-certified (HCS-D, HCS-O) or want to become dual-certified.

Please submit your most challenging and difficult scenario(s) and our experts will work through them during the afternoon Interactive Coding session. You must submit your questions to MHerr@decisionhealth.com by June 1, 2023.

Coding conventions, coding guidelines, tabular instructions, OASIS guidance, Coding Clinic—they don’t always agree, and many times they conflict. So what takes precedence when you’re coding? As many as 80% of coding errors stem from this conundrum. During this session, ensure your coding is accurate and compliant by learning which guidance to follow and when.

Tool: Coding guidance decision tree

Mining for diagnoses and coding from prior episodes, upcoding, or switching diagnoses to keep someone on service—all can lead to fraud, financial penalties, loss of your credential, and even jail time. Some of these practices are inadvertent and unintentional. Learn how to differentiate between compliant and noncompliant agency coding practices, how to make proper corrections, and what to do when your boss is asking you to code something you know is upcoding. Get specific examples of when you need to lean on the coding guidelines and how to avoid the most common upcoding errors.

If you are responsible for coding hospice cases, this session is for you. Learn how to code hospice cases based on the current guidelines and present a clear picture of the patient’s terminal diagnosis as well as all related and unrelated diagnoses, especially since the top terminal hospice diagnoses shifted from cancer to neuro diagnoses. Practice coding by working through hands-on practice scenarios.

Work at a quick pace through complicated and uncommon disease scenarios, including cases with multiple comorbidities, sequencing complications, bypass procedures/revisions, and wound complications, including trauma and surgical.

Join our experts for a moderated panel discussion that will cover the top challenges facing home health coders today. Our experts will provide solutions and advice, and then we’ll open it up to the audience for feedback and questions.