As Piedmont Healthcare expanded through strategic growth and acquisition, integrating new surgical locations into a single electronic health record (EHR) became a challenge. The Atlanta-based health system faced inconsistencies in surgical terminology and procedure codes across different sites, impacting data quality, scheduling accuracy, and perioperative workflows.
In this webinar, Allyson Keller, VP of Piedmont’s Patient Connection Center, shares how her team successfully implemented IMO Health’s surgical scheduling solution to standardize and enhance their perioperative data management.
In a hurry? Continue scrolling for a few clips and excerpts from this session.
The importance of a clean surgical dictionary
In this clip, Wes Galbo, SVP Product Management at IMO Health, discusses the importance of using a clean surgical dictionary to improve data accuracy and reduce inpatient-only denials. By working with clients to optimize their surgical dictionaries, Wes highlights how IMO Health can help deliver benefits such as a reduction in denials and improvements in case duration accuracy.
He also expands on the challenges many health systems face, including bloated dictionaries and incorrect CPT code mappings, noting, “More than three-quarters of the time, we are finding procedures that are missing CPT codes or HCPCS codes… that makes for a very difficult scheduling workflow if that inconsistent data is applied.”
Addressing CPT code gaps in surgery scheduling
Keller describes how Piedmont Healthcare’s rapid expansion exposed critical gaps in their surgical scheduling data, particularly the absence of CPT codes linked to procedures. This lack of standardized codes led to significant challenges, including difficulties with authorizations and inaccuracies in case duration estimates.
Keller explains, “We had no CPT codes linked to our procedures. We had feedback from the authorization team that they did not have the CPT codes that they needed to be able to do the authorization.”
These issues prompted Piedmont to seek a solution that could integrate seamlessly with their EHR system and ensure consistency across their expanding network. Implementing IMO Health’s solution allowed Piedmont to clean up their procedure lists, eliminate duplicates, and standardize terms, significantly improving their scheduling accuracy and data quality.
HCPCS codes help non-clinical schedulers
On the impact of standardizing surgical terminology, Keller also notes how integrating HCPCS codes into Piedmont’s scheduling processes made a difference. She discusses the importance of aliases for procedures, which allow non-clinical schedulers to find and use the correct terms easily, reducing errors and improving efficiency. Keller provides examples of how these improvements have benefited Piedmont, for example, by facilitating better data management across their expanding healthcare network.
