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Monday, October 8, 2012

What Is Medicare Risk Adjustment?

By Weldon Oaks


When it comes to determining the number and the amount of payments to be provided to members of the Medicare Advantage plan, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid have instated the risk adjustment program. The Medicare Advantage program uses an equation that looks into a number of different kinds of diagnostic data as well as the client's health history in order to determine the number of risk factors a specific member has. To look at it more simply, the risk adjustment calculation uses the member's health issues and determines the monetary amount each issue will end up costing over a certain time period.

This method of risk adjustment calculation has been used by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid for an extended period of time and has been continuously improved upon. One of the most vital aspects of a successful Medicare risk adjustment is to be able to predict the cost of care correctly in respect to specific diseases. The current practice of Medicare is to gather its information from the member's health care plan through claims data in order to determine how much payment should be made through risk adjustment. What this means is that the private health insurance companies are responsible for providing the form and necessary information to Medicare. The health care companies are the main source of information used in determining Medicare payment amounts.

One of the most important parts of having a Medicare risk adjustment program that works and is successful is being able to correctly estimate what the cost of each specific condition will most likely be. The way that it is done currently is by looking at the information gathered in forms provided by the health care supplier as well as the private health insurance providers. Because there is so much importance placed on this information to determine the amount of compensation a member will receive, it is necessary to make sure the information recorded is correct. There is a big area for potential error when it comes to recording patient information as well as the details of patient encounters.

With so much room for error, putting an emphasis on complete and correct recording from the health care supplier through to the centers of Medicare and Medicaid is absolutely essential. One of the larger problems that Medicare has come in contact with is having patients who charts do not contain all of the diagnostic codes that apply. When a limited number of codes are recorded for a patient, then the result may be insufficient estimation of necessary payments for that individual. It is necessary to pay close attention to details within each aspect of the process from the care being provided through to the Medicare payments.

To learn more about Medicare Risk Adjustment go to Altegra Health.




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1 comments:

sammax said...

interesting blog. It would be great if you can provide more details about it. Thanks you







Medicare Risk Adjustment Coding

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