Mortality clinical coding alerts and reviews

Learning from the investigation into Mid Staffordshire, never has there been greater emphasis on mortality reporting.  Together with serious issues around standards and processes, data quality issues were highlighted that distorted calculated mortality statistics.

To evaluate and reassure you that the information your trust reports is correct, we have developed an innovative alerting and coding review service.  With a wealth of experience in undertaking clinical coding audits using Information Governance standards, we also provide targeted audits for specialties, specific conditions and mortality records.  By identifying cases with a statistically low risk of an outcome of death, based on the clinical coding and demographic data, we provide an ‘alert list'.  An internal audit by your coding team and clinicians can be undertaken, records recoded where appropriate and resubmitted.

Following the implementation of this service, the mortality index (RAMI) for one client trust dropped from an average of 109 in 2007/08 to 83 the following year, demonstrating the critical impact that data quality and clinical coding have on a trust's understanding of their own quality of care, not to mention reputation for regulators and patients. 

Using a team of experience healthcare consultants and Connecting for Health qualified auditors, we are now offering this service in two levels:

1. Identification ‘alert list' of individual patient records with potentially inaccurate coding, within hours of receiving your activity data, for your clinical coding team to review and recode as appropriate
2. Full coding review service incorporating identification of cases to target, audit in collaboration with your coding team, and recoding for resubmission within ‘flex and freeze' deadline

Whether you choose the full coding review service or alerts to patient records to target, our experienced team will analyse your data and select cases with potentially incomplete or inaccurate coding.  These cases can then be recoded and allocated to more accurate HRG categories, to ensure that any external reporting is based on accurate and audited data.

To improve your trust's coding and clinical information capture please contact us.