Bringing flexibility and efficiency to medical coding workflows

The challenge

In the past, Allina Health had two coders working on the same documentation. One coder completed the coding for the facility portion and another coder completed the coding for the professional portion. Each of these coding teams, facility and professional, had siloed workflows. The goal was to create a unified structure that included one coding team and one coding workflow to improve efficiency and increase coder flexibility. With this challenge in mind, Allina Health set out to implement the 3M™ 360 Encompass™ Professional System to unite all coders under one platform.

The journey to single path: A phased approach

With this challenge in mind, Allina Health set out to implement 3M 360 Encompass Professional to unite all coders under one platform. Allina Health implemented 3M 360 Encompass Professional in four phases:

Implementation best practices: Super users to the rescue

Changing workflows can be a complicated process, so Allina Health decided to train super users to help ease into the change. Each go live, three super user coders learned the system first and assisted other coders who were learning the system. These super users were highly respected, fast learners, great at articulating issues and responded calmly if something was not working how they wanted it. They were key to a smooth transition.

Communication was another essential ingredient for successful implementation. On the first day of go live, Allina Health had an open line of communication with Solventum so that coders, leadership and IT could ask questions. Once the coders were ready to launch, Allina Health opened another line just for the coders, super users and leadership. If the super users were unable to answer questions, they would call back into the Solventum line to get clarification and support. After each phase, the super users would advance their skillset, which made coder training even more streamlined.

Cross-training professional and facility coders months ahead of go live allowed coders to get familiar with the different coding needs and technology. Facility coders trained on evaluation and management (E/M) levels and professional coders on abstracting, but Allina Health quickly learned that it was more than just those two components and opted to train coders on the specifics for each specialty as needed for each go live. Coders were allowed time each week to practice so they would not lose their newly acquired skillsets.

Finally, Allina Health learned that starting with small specialties was the way to go. Small specialties with lower volume meant a more controlled environment and less risk of significant consequences if there were a few hiccups during the roll out.

Future phases

After experiencing strong results following the implementation of various specialties, Allina Health is ready and pursuing the next phase of implementation (phase 5) with cardiovascular; its largest specialty. The health system also plans to implement the newest feature of 3M 360 Encompass CAC, 3M™ Code Confidence for the facility side. 3M Code Confidence uses an organization’s own auto-suggested precision and recall statistics to auto-drop codes that meet selected confidence parameters into the summary pane for final code set completion. This will help Allina Health achieve its goals of furthering automation and preparing for a more autonomous coding experience.

*Results, outcomes and/or financial improvements should not be interpreted as a guarantee or warranty of similar results. Individual results vary depending on circumstances.