It would be difficult to overemphasize the importance of specific documentation that uses precise clinical terminology during a patient visit. The obvious reasons spring to mind – improved patient care, clearer communication between providers, better overall outcomes. But that’s really just the beginning.
When we lose specificity at the point of care, a host of cascading problems emerge. Reimbursement rates suffer. Population health initiatives become more difficult to manage. Clinical research and analytics projects start from poor foundational data. And efforts to normalize data are fraught with issues stemming from incomplete information.
For these reasons – and many more – it’s easy to see why specificity is essential when it comes to health IT. However, it’s not always so obvious how to make sure point-of-care documentation contains the granularity and nuance needed to solve the problems above. That’s why our latest white paper, Specificity is the new black: A guide to getting greater reimbursement, examines five ways healthcare data can be diminished and how your organization can mitigate negative impacts on the bottom line.
