Medicare HCC coding is mission critical for HMOs

Many plans currently receive radically lower premiums than those to which they are entitled. The reason, simply stated is because:

Why is this so important? Contrast it to disease management. Best practice in DM saves maybe $200 per Medicare life. Best practice in coding achieves a $2,000 increase in reimbursement through identifying correct codes. So coding is 10 times as important as DM-yet you are likely spending 10 times as much on DM than coding.

How do we know whether we are close to best practice? Look at your Risk Adjustment Factor (RAF). If it's not 15% higher than it was last year or it's less than 1.15, you aren't.

You are probably licensing a data scoring tool. And you are probably sending your HEDIS coders into the physician practices to find codes in the charts and transcribe them to the scoring tool. But HEDIS coders aren't clinical. Often, the charts support diagnoses which aren't listed as such and, hence, get missed. Alternatively, there are sometimes diagnoses listed which are not supported by the progress notes. A HEDIS coder won't recognize either, and you, in turn, now face both inadequate code capture and a significant compliance risk when you get audited.

Counterintuitively, the plans which have the highest RAFs often do best on the CMS audits, too, since their documentation trail is comprehensive. Using your coders is the low-cost solution but the idea is to maximize total net revenue, not to reduce administrative cost.

In presentations you have been disproportionately focused on the homebound and nursing home residents. Why are these members only about 6% of our total?

The 6% or so of MA members who are homebound or institutionalized tend to be sicker than average. At the same time, clinical coding for these members tends to be poorer than average. This combination means that a comprehensive history and physical exam along with good chart documentation for this 6% of members represents up to 40% of the coding opportunity, in addition to being the most likely segment in which potential hospitalizations can be averted with a physician visit. The difference between a 15% bump and a 20% bump is in these members. The likelihood of cost savings through hospitalization avoidance adds the equivalent of another 2% to 3%.

What next?

There are a few best-of-breed HCC consulting firms in both the broad-brush 94% category and the 6% nursing-home category, but many others who won't approach that 15% to 20% best practice. Ask colleagues or DM consultants to recommend them.