Provider Friendly Terminology – Benefits and Importance

ICD codes are used to track healthcare statistics, quality outcomes, billing, and more for diagnostic purposes under HIPAA. Over the years, they have changed, been refined and revised to to improve the quality of data. Provider friendly terminology (PFT) in some EMR software aims to eliminate hardships in locating the correct codes for diagnosis. Let’s address some of the issues with medical terminology before sharing the benefits of PFT.

Addressing Issues with Medical Terminology

Physicians and practices as a whole face a range of problems when it comes to medical terminology. Inaccurate ICD-10 coding due to coding errors during diagnosis hinders the bottom line for a practice. Coupled with this, coding mishaps may also lead to compliance issues for Meaningful Use. This impacts a practice’s ability  to receive incentive reimbursements if errors are not corrected and recorded.

Other concerns outside of financial issues exist in regards to medical terminology. Some physicians become frustrated at times when they can’t find the appropriate code for a diagnoses or it takes too long during an exam to locate what they’re looking for. All of this searching detracts from already limited patient face time. To add to this, the code the clinician chooses may not be the most precise code for the patient. This could lead the coding team or your biller to ask for a more specific code. All of this leads to provider dissatisfaction with their EHR system, burnout, and excess work that is ultimately necessary.

An EHR platform with enhanced user capabilities, like PVT, allows providers to directly address medical terminology issues. Provider friendly terminology can “help reduce inefficient workflows” and “improve error rates.” This ultimately leads to improved provider satisfaction, better patient safety, and a greener bottom line.

Provider Friendly Terminology

A PVT solution, like the one provided by Health Language, helps to standardize clinical information such as problems, procedures, and diagnoses within an EMR system. It maps information to enable a provider to look up information quickly and efficiently. This ultimately eliminates extra work later on. This in itself improves satisfaction for providers, helps to decrease the likelihood of coding errors, and increases productivity.

These types of systems are able to do this by creating a comprehensive library of commonly-used synonyms and then mapping them to SNOMED, ICD-9, and ICD-10.  Here are some of the core benefits as listed directly on HealthITOutcomes:

• Increase productivity by speeding problem/diagnosis searching.
• Increase clinician satisfaction by automatically mapping familiar clinical terms to the appropriate standards.
• Ease the transition to ICD-10 by guiding physicians to the appropriate code.
• Support Meaningful Use Stage 2 by encoding problem lists in SNOMED.
• Minimize lost revenue associated with inaccurate or incomplete clinical documentation. (Source: HealthITOutcomes)

In Version 18 of MicroMD, clients access Provider Friendly Terminology software through Health Language. PVT helps them to locate and choose appropriate and precise codes.

Are you interested in learning more about MicroMD and Health Language? Visit us today at micromd.com/marketplace or call us at 800.624.8832.