• E-mail
• Print
• RSS

Pay attention to Present on Admission (POA)

Case Management Weekly, April 4, 2007

Want to receive articles like this one in your inbox? Subscribe to Case Management Weekly!

If you're not already aware of the Present on Admission (POA) indicator-a critical data element that indicates whether a particular diagnosis was present at the time of the order for inpatient admission-you will be soon.

Under the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, CMS is mandated to implement a requirement that hospitals report POA-type information for secondary diagnoses on Medicare claims starting October 1, 2007.

This requirement is supposed to help separate conditions that a specific patient has 'present on admission,' versus those conditions that may occur over the course of a hospital stay, says Jackie Birmingham, RN, BSN, MS, CMAC, vice president of Curaspan, Inc , in Newton, MA.

What this means for case management and coding departments is that if it is not documented that a patient has a history of a condition or the possibility of developing a specific diagnoses, the hospital may not get reimbursed for treating those conditions that come up later during a patient's stay, says Birmingham.

To read more about POA, the full article will be published in the May issue of Case Mangement Monthly.

Source: Case Management Monthly, May 2007

Want to receive articles like this one in your inbox? Subscribe to Case Management Weekly!

• E-mail to a Colleague
• Print
• RSS
• Archive