Introduction - Medical necessity is required for virtually every claim to a third party payer and ICD-9 is the coding system that documents the medical necessity. Participants will learn how to look up codes for diagnoses, signs & symptoms, ill-defined conditions and health status codes (V- Codes). Participants will learn the proper sequencing of codes, the specificity of each code and coding conventions used in volumes 1 and 2 of ICD-9. This program is designed for all staff and physicians.

This Practice Management Audiocast Presentation includes ...

• This Audiocast is of a recent Live Webconference presented by Economedix;
• Your registration fee covers the ability for you and your practice to view this presentation for one year along with various course handout materials;
• The ability for ACS Fellows and practice managers to e-mail follow-up questions to Economedix Practice Management Advisors for personalized responses;
• Co-Sponsors - The American College of Surgeons (ACS) and The Professional Association of Health Care Office Management (PAHCOM).

Course Objectives - Completion of this Practice Management Course will provide:

• Understand the proper use of the various sections of ICD-9-CM;
• Identify and locate a diagnosis code from the index (Volume 2);
• Understand codes from the tables in Volume 2;
• Properly assign complete codes from the Tabular list (Volume 1);
• Properly sequence codes for submission to third party payers; and
• Identify ICD-9-CM codes from descriptive medical records using the tabular list of codes including V- codes and E- codes.

Accreditation - The American College of Surgeons is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) to provide continuing medical education to physicians.

Credits - The American College of Surgeons designates this educational activity for a maximum of 1.5 category 1 credits toward the AMA Physician's Recognition Award. Each physician should claim only those credits that he/she actually spent in the educational activity. PAHCOM has pre-approved this educational activity for 1 CEU towards the PAHCOM CMM designation. To earn the credit, participants must complete the combination Evaluation / CME - CEU Form, that is included in the course materials, and FAX this form back within seven days following the date of the teleconference.

Faculty - The faculty for the course is Mr. Tom Loughrey, MBA, CCS-P. Mr. Loughrey is Chairman of Economedix and a noted practice management consultant to physicians, medical offices and medical societies. For over a decade, Mr. Loughrey has provided consulting services to the College as a part of the Consultant’s Corner at the annual ACS Clinical Congress and regularly is engaged by ACS to speak and teach at meetings and workshops throughout the country.