We’ve had issues for years with using Smart Search and the inaccuracies with the CODE/Description combination - the description doesn’t match at all to the actual code and we’ve gotten “dinged” during an audit by a payer because the description does not match the code at all. When I complain to IMO Vendor about this - they say basically they don’t care - their product isn’t meant for billing basically since the payer never sees the description just the code - well they see it during audits for sure!
When I turn smart search OFF and I search for an ICD10 code - I’m seeing quite a few variances in the description for 1 code as well - similar to what we see using Smart Search.
For example, if you look up M54.12 in both smart search and without - you get numerous descriptions - and some descriptions embellish far behind what the code actually is. We see this a lot with codes.
So here’s the dilemma, when we find these and want to inactivate wrong code/description combo’s I can do this in the regular ECW lookup - however this does not impact using Smart Search and everyone is enabled for it.
Has anyone else been dealing with this issue - have you moved away from using Smart Search - its an added cost - and maybe the regular DX codes out of the box from ECW are easier to find now than they were back in 2012 when we started using ECW (back in the day it was a nightmare to look up ICD10 codes which is why we went to Smart Search in the first place) .
Appreciate ECW user thoughts on this.