Baptist Health South Improves Documentation, Quality and Appropriate Reimbursement with Nuance CDI
November 22 2016 - 8:30AM
Business Wire
Unique Program Engages Physicians and Drives
$45 million in Appropriate Reimbursement at Five Affiliated
Hospitals
Nuance Communications, Inc. (Nasdaq: NUAN) today announced
that Baptist Health South Florida has realized $45 million in
increased appropriate reimbursement since the implementation
of Nuance Clinical Documentation Improvement (CDI), which
optimizes the accuracy and efficiency of physician documentation
and communication of patient care. Not only did Baptist Health
significantly improve financial outcomes, it improved the tracking
and reporting of patient’s clinical conditions, which more than
doubled metrics including severity of illness (SOI) and risk of
mortality (ROM) to directly impact quality of care and treatment
decisions.
Baptist Health South Florida deployed Nuance’s CDI program
across its five hospitals in October of 2011. The improved accuracy
and completeness of physician documentation generated a 13%
increase in Case Mix Index (CMI) across the system, which
translated to $45 million in appropriate reimbursement over the
course of four years. The system’s largest hospital alone saw a 14%
CMI increase and a financial impact of $26.5 million, supporting
the care of sicker patients than originally documented.
“The goal of the CDI program is to make sure the final codes
accurately reflect the complexity and severity of a patient’s
illness, promoting accuracy and higher quality of the medical
record,” said Dr. Lorena Chicoye, corporate medical director of
managed care at Baptist. “Once the Nuance clinical documentation
program was up and running, it was amazing how much more
documentation we were able to capture and the greater specificity
we experienced. Now, our documentation more accurately reflects the
high quality patient care our physicians are delivering.”
Better Insights into Patient CareThrough Nuance’s
Advanced Practice CDI™ program, Baptist Health more accurately
documented the disease acuity of its patient population, which
doubled its reporting of severity of illness from 8% to 17.1%, and
the mortality risk from 7.7% to 14.5%. Clinicians are now able to
provide a more complete and detailed picture of a patient’s health
to recommend better treatment plans, provide better patient
outcomes and more accurately reflect quality especially when
publicly reported.
“Nuance is focused on helping clinicians advance quality of care
in their communities while also supporting the business of
healthcare by helping organizations successfully transition to
value-based payments (VBP),” said Satish Maripuri, executive vice
president and general manager of the Healthcare Division, Nuance
Communications. “Nuance’s award winning clinically-focused CDI
approach leads to better overall quality ratings and patient care
along with tangible financial outcomes, which directly impact how
providers are paid. Baptist Health South Florida is a great example
of what a Nuance CDI program can do.”
Physician Engagement Drives GainsOnce Nuance CDI was
implemented, physicians could receive clarifications and make
adjustments on diagnoses while patients were still in their care
before details were missed. This improved the documentation
process, and also improved education and physician response rates,
thereby capturing more accurate severity and mortality rates, which
ultimately impact the quality outcomes of hospitals. By instilling
CDI best practices, the Baptist team went from a 20% response rate
from physicians to a 95% response rate and most agree to
recommended improvements for their documentation.
In addition to using innovative tools that facilitate
documentation in real-time, Baptist Health employed international
physicians as clinical documentation specialists. Because they are
physicians, they have the clinical knowledge essential to help
translate clinical speak into documentation requirements that are
important in patient charts to support ICD-10 codes and quality
metrics.
“We use international physicians as clinical documentation
specialists because doctor-to-doctor communication works best when
making suggestions about what they should do differently,” said Dr.
Chicoye. “We recruit physicians who are medical graduates, ready
and waiting to get into residency programs. Using the physicians as
clinical documentation specialists has reduced physician resistance
to CDI, because they use the same clinical terminology and can
speak with authority.”
- Learn more about Baptist Health South
in this webinar featuring Dr. Chicoye.
Nuance provides intelligent systems that support a more natural
and insightful approach to clinical documentation, freeing
clinicians to spend more time caring for patients. Nuance
healthcare solutions capture, improve and communicate more than 300
million patient stories each year helping more than 500,000
clinicians in 10,000 global healthcare organizations to drive
meaningful clinical and financial outcomes. Nuance’s award-winning
clinical speech recognition, medical transcription, CDI, coding,
quality and medical imaging solutions provide a more complete and
accurate view of patient care.
About Nuance Communications, Inc.Nuance Communications,
Inc. (NASDAQ: NUAN) is a leading provider of voice and language
solutions for businesses and consumers around the world. Its
technologies, applications and services make the user experience
more compelling by transforming the way people interact with
devices and systems. Every day, millions of users and thousands of
businesses experience Nuance’s proven applications. For more
information, please visit www.nuance.com.
Trademark reference: Nuance and the Nuance logo are registered
trademarks or trademarks of Nuance Communications, Inc. or its
affiliates in the United States and/or other countries. All other
trademarks referenced herein are the property of their respective
owners.
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Nuance Communications, Inc.Ann Joyal,
781-565-4155ann.joyal@nuance.com
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