Summary of April IOCE Changes

The Integrated Outpatient Code Editor Summary of Data Changes document, published quarterly by CMS, is exceedingly valuable for hospital chargemaster maintenance. It is concise and lists all coding changes by their effective date. It is an essential for quarterly chargemaster updates.

The IOCE Summary of Data Changes document provides all quarterly changes related to:

APC CHANGES

• Added APCs
• APC Description Changes

HCPCS/CPT PROCEDURE CODE CHANGES

• Added HCPCS/CPT Procedure Codes
• HCPCS Changes- APC, Status Indicator and/or Edit
• Edit Assignments
• Procedure/ Device Pair Changes

MODIFIERS

• Added Modifiers

REVENUE CODES

• Added Revenue Codes

To demonstrate how concisely changes are published in the Summary of Data Changes, I've listed the following changes for the April 1, 2010, IOCE v 11.1.

The centralization of quarterly changes to these codes and modifiers in one document has provided a single-source publication that can be used to assure accuracy and reduce the time and effort devoted to quarterly chargemaster updates.

You can access the Integrated Outpatient Code Editor Summary of Data Changes in the Coding Suite.                                                                                                                                       

Written by Vicky Fry, MS, MBA