What Is Computer Assisted Coding System (CACS)? - TechTarget

Key features to look for when selecting a CACS

When selecting a CACS product, healthcare organizations and providers must look for software that includes the following features and capabilities:

• It should seamlessly integrate with the provider's EHR documents and images to ensure that it acquires all the necessary information and produces accurate codes.
• It should also integrate with existing clinical and administrative applications and workflows, including billing and insurance to enable seamless data-sharing.
• It should include the organization's must-have functionalities, such as work queues, security features and user-friendly interfaces.
• It should be able to assign the correct codes and modifiers depending on the services provided, date of service and patient.
• It should allow the organization to set a customizable time frame for document storage based on factors like current coding backlog, bandwidth requirements, memory costs, etc.
• Ideally, it should be scalable and include expansion capabilities.
• Ideally, it should maintain a list of the organization's providers (physician master index) to eliminate the need for manually reproducing this data.
• The product should include security safeguards to meet the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act's (HIPAA) security requirements.
• The vendor should provide regular upgrades and security patches to protect the organization's data and the security of its patients.

The selected CACS should also include reporting capabilities. It should provide detailed and downloadable reports that enable the healthcare provider to review the performance and return on investment of the CACS. These might include reports on the following:

• CAC acceptance rates (per coder or per department).
• CAC coder rejection rates (per coder or per department).
• New CAC charges captured.
• DNFC (Discharge Not Final Coded) report (by days and dollars).
• Trending by inpatient procedure code.
• Trending by outpatient diagnosis code.
• Trending by outpatient CPT code.
• Narrative summary of statistics.
• Other reports that help with clinical documentation improvement.

To choose the best possible product, buyers should request selected vendors to provide product demonstrations using real-life examples. Vendors should be able to show how their product decreases the average time needed to code a case, speeds up tedious manual tasks like code lookup and data entry, accurately captures all charges, and how it can potentially reduce additional work during claim submissions.

Before finalizing a CACS purchase, buyers should also ask vendors for important information, such as the following:

• Vendor's org size.
• Number of years in business.
• Number of successful installations.
• User group information.
• References from and contact information of other clients.
• Standard response time to issues or queries.
• Details about the vendor's NLP architecture, CAC database, and CAC reporting functions and features.

This information can help with vendor and product evaluations and enable providers to select the CACS that best suits their requirements, workflows and budget.