AHIMA Partnership Designed to Streamline Query Process

AHIMA has joined with Artifact Health to provide and maintain a comprehensive library of compliant physician query templates utilized within Artifact’s HIPAA-compliant, cloud-based platform. Artifact provides the first and only mobile platform that streamlines the physician query process, engaging physicians, clinical documentation improvement (CDI) specialists and coders with an easier and faster process to drive improvements in hospital and physician coding accuracy and publicly reported quality measures. 

AHIMA recently published its Guidelines for Achieving a Compliant Query Practice (2019 Update) to establish and support industrywide best practices for the function of clinical documentation querying. Through this partnership with Artifact Health, AHIMA will widely disseminate its standardized, electronic query templates and educational guidance for physicians and CDI and HIM professionals to help clarify clinical documentation and ultimately improve the quality of patient records. 

“It’s the perfect alliance—Artifact makes it easy for physicians to respond to queries quickly, and AHIMA ensures query template information provided will be compliant,” says AHIMA CEO Wylecia Wiggs Harris, PHD, CAE. “Efficient and accurate coding is vital to meet compliance, and it’s our responsibility as leaders of HIM to guide this process and ensure accurate health records and proper reimbursement for hospitals and physicians.” 

Typically, the query process is onerous and time-consuming for physicians. With Artifact Health’s mobile platform, physicians respond to a query compliantly in seconds, often with as few as three taps on their smartphone. Query activity is automatically tracked and reported, rather than manually recorded by CDI specialists and coders, and available in real-time dashboards and reports.

“The alliance between AHIMA and Artifact Health is an industry first for standardizing compliant query workflow,” says Marisa MacClary, cofounder and CEO of Artifact Health. “Hospitals and health systems can integrate AHIMA’s world-class knowledge and best practices into their physician query process and be assured queries and educational guidance are accurate, compliant, and current.”

 — Source: AHIMA