UMEM Educational Pearls - Misc

Category: Misc

Title: Coding and Billing Pearls

Keywords: Coding, Billing, Reimburshment (PubMed Search)

Posted: 12/16/2007 by Michael Bond, MD (Updated: 7/16/2024)
Click here to contact Michael Bond, MD

The insurance companies are always trying to down code our visits so that they can save money, and unless we diagnosis the patients with the appropriate jargon it can cost us a lot of money. Here are some coding suggestions as written by Sharon Nicks, President and CEO of Nicks & Associates in EP Monthly .

Diagnosis	Consider Diagnosising It this, if the condition fits
Esophagitis	Acute Chest Pain
U.R.I.	Acute febrille illness with cough Acute tracheobronchitis
Gastroenteritis	Acute severe abdominal pain Acute dehydration (volume depletion) secondary to nausea/vomiting Electrolyte imbalance
Flu/Viral Ilness	Acute viremia Acute febrile illness
Musculoskeletal Pain	Acute cervical pain Acute chest wall syndrome Acute strain or pain to a specific (i.e: lumbar) due to a MVA or fall
Otitis Media	Acute febrile illness secondary to acute otitis media Otalagia

The moral of this pearl is try to use words like Acute, Severe, Sudden, Serious, Distress, Pain, or Fever so that it is clearer to the insurance companies that the patient warranted a visit to a physician (i.e.: an ED) before their PCP could see them in a week.

Category: Misc

Title: Changes to the educational list format

Keywords: administrative, notice, admin, tech (PubMed Search)

Posted: 10/4/2007 by Dan Lemkin, MS, MD (Updated: 7/16/2024)
Click here to contact Dan Lemkin, MS, MD

I have made some improvements to the educational pearl interface. This required recoding several sections to change the text formatting from plain text to html...

Why do you care?
Well, many email clients will block html, or messages that have lots of capitals, decorations, etc...

Our first priority is to get you the information and beat anti-spam auto-filtering. If you notice that you are not getting the educational emails.

Add admin@umem.org and umem.org to your safe senders list

If it still doesn't work, send me an email. If many people are having problems, I will revert to the old system of text entry... But if this works, hopefully it will make the messages easier to read.

Notes to authors

Do not use a lot of colors like this post
Do not use allcaps, lots of bolding, etc...

thanks
dan

Category: Misc

Title: Medical Management Ureteral Stones

Keywords: Ureteral, stone, tamsulosin, management (PubMed Search)

Posted: 7/21/2007 by Michael Bond, MD (Updated: 7/16/2024)
Click here to contact Michael Bond, MD

Medical Management of Ureteral Stones Tamsulosin (Flomax ) has been shown to help increase the passage of ureteral calculi. According to a metaanalysis compared to patients receiving conservative therapy only, patients receiving conservative therapy plus α -blockers were 44% more likely to spontaneously expel the stones (RR 1.44, 95% CI 1.31 to 1.59, p0.001), and stone expulsion incidence increased significantly (RD 0.28, 95% CI 0.22 to 0.34, p0.001). Mechanism of action: Alpha blockage results in ureteral smooth muscle relaxtion and subsequent inhibition of ureteral spasms and dilatation of the ureteral lumen. Erturhan S. Erbagci A. Yagci F. Celik M. Solakhan M. Sarica K. Comparative evaluation of efficacy of use of tamsulosin and/or tolterodine for medical treatment of distal ureteral stones. [Comparative Study. Journal Article. Randomized Controlled Trial] Urology. 69(4):633-6, 2007 Apr. Parsons JK. Hergan LA. Sakamoto K. Lakin C. Efficacy of alpha-blockers for the treatment of ureteral stones. [Journal Article. Meta-Analysis] Journal of Urology. 177(3):983-7; discussion 987, 2007 Mar.

Category: Misc

Title: Test of new education blog/listserv

Keywords: Listserv, mailing list, test (PubMed Search)

Posted: 7/10/2007 by Dan Lemkin, MS, MD (Emailed: 7/8/2007) (Updated: 7/16/2024)
Click here to contact Dan Lemkin, MS, MD

I am redesigning the way the educational pearls are sent. You will still receive them via email to the education list. This will not change. What will change, is that a record will be available for review on the website in the residency --> pearls section. Currently you can browse the posts as the come in. In the very near future, you will be able to search by keywords and review several pearls at once. This should serve as a really handy review tool. Please bear with me as I test the email system to ensure it comes across ok. thanks dan