Enhancing Clinical Coding Efficiency: Leveraging Cutting-Edge Technology for Optimal Results

Francis May 21, 2023

When you think of hospitals, you might imagine doctors bustling around, tending to patients, but there’s a lot more going on behind the scenes. For instance, did you know that each hospital admission is clinically coded? Yep, and it’s quite a big deal.

Clinical coding is a system used to capture the condition and treatment of the patient. But unfortunately, it’s not always foolproof. Sometimes, diagnosis and procedure codes are accidentally omitted, leading to incomplete representation of a patient’s condition and treatment. This not only affects the quality of the patient’s care but also impacts the hospital’s revenue.

Now, wouldn’t it be cool if there was a real-time system that could recommend codes at the point of coding to prevent such errors? A recent study by Suleiman, Demirhan, Boyd, Girosi, and Aksakalli proposes just that – a clinical coding recommender system. Let’s dive into how they made it happen.

Currently, there’s a process called association analysis that uncovers patterns between codes, forming a basis for coding recommendations. However, it’s combined with expert validation, which, although it produces useful recommendations, is time-consuming and labour-intensive.

In their innovative approach, the team used Bayesian Networks to determine the conditional relationships between codes. They designed a testing strategy to assess the performance of their system by simulating errors through the random removal of codes from patient care episodes. The system would then recommend the codes that seemed to be missing. The performance of the system was evaluated based on how many of the removed codes it recommended and how many superfluous recommendations it made (that is, codes recommended that were not actually removed), which the team sought to minimize.

So, what were the results? Drumroll, please!

Their recommender system performed impressively well, generating 96% of the number of correct recommendations produced by the expert validated list (the traditional method), but with a whopping 68% fewer superfluous recommendations.

That’s fantastic, isn’t it?

By integrating technology into the clinical coding process, Suleiman and his team were able to create a high-performance recommender system, reducing the dependence on time-consuming efforts by clinical coding experts. Their study shows how technology can be used to improve efficiency and accuracy in healthcare – in this case, clinical coding – which can have far-reaching implications for patient care and hospital management.

This is yet another reminder of how innovation and technology can revolutionize healthcare, making it more efficient, accurate, and patient-focused. So, the next time you think of a hospital, remember, it’s not just about doctors and nurses; there’s a whole world of data management and technology working in the background to provide the best care possible. And it’s constantly improving, thanks to groundbreaking studies like this one.

Sources:

Mani Suleiman, Haydar Demirhan, Leanne Boyd, Federico Girosi, Vural Aksakalli, A clinical coding recommender system, Knowledge-Based Systems, Volume 210, 2020, 106455, ISSN 0950-7051,
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.knosys.2020.106455

Categories: Clinical Coding Studies
Francis
Francis is an accredited clinical coding educator with over a decade of clinical coding experience in the UK. Passionate about the transformative power of e-learning, Francis blends this expertise with an innovative approach to education as a TAP Learning Practitioner. The mission is not just to educate but to inspire, fostering a community of lifelong learners in the dynamic world of clinical coding. With a commitment to improving the industry through education, Francis’s work is marked by an engaging, interactive, and inclusive approach, making every day an opportunity to learn, grow, and redefine what’s possible.