Juergen Fritsch, chief scientist at Franklin, Tenn.-based M*Modal, and his colleagues developed natural language understanding technology for healthcare to help computerized systems turn spoken and typed words into structured data, according to Healthcare IT News.
Here are five ways NLU can help transform healthcare.
1. Conversation documentation. NLU can take a physician's dictation and interpret the narrative into actionable items for patients. This improves the efficiency of the documentation process.
2. Computer-assisted coding. Computer-assisted coding programs that use NLU can pull information from physician notes and automatically assign proper billing codes, speeding up the process and accuracy in billing. It will be an asset during the ICD-10 transition, experts say.
3. Clinical documentation improvement. As procedures and billing codes become more complex, it is easier for providers to leave a procedure or treatment undocumented and lose payment. NLU systems can identify missing, incomplete or inconsistent information in a physician's documentation.
4. Clinical decision support. Clinical decision support can provide clinical research to guide a physician. Currently, physicians can look back on records to see how treatment affected patients, but with NLU integration a physician can make requests for certain data, and NLU can pull from unstructured information and notes.
5. Interoperability. NLU can analyze all patient documents and build lists of information, such as allergies, medications and past medical procedures. This limits information from being lost in a medical records transfer from one physician to another.
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Here are five ways NLU can help transform healthcare.
1. Conversation documentation. NLU can take a physician's dictation and interpret the narrative into actionable items for patients. This improves the efficiency of the documentation process.
2. Computer-assisted coding. Computer-assisted coding programs that use NLU can pull information from physician notes and automatically assign proper billing codes, speeding up the process and accuracy in billing. It will be an asset during the ICD-10 transition, experts say.
3. Clinical documentation improvement. As procedures and billing codes become more complex, it is easier for providers to leave a procedure or treatment undocumented and lose payment. NLU systems can identify missing, incomplete or inconsistent information in a physician's documentation.
4. Clinical decision support. Clinical decision support can provide clinical research to guide a physician. Currently, physicians can look back on records to see how treatment affected patients, but with NLU integration a physician can make requests for certain data, and NLU can pull from unstructured information and notes.
5. Interoperability. NLU can analyze all patient documents and build lists of information, such as allergies, medications and past medical procedures. This limits information from being lost in a medical records transfer from one physician to another.
More Articles on Coding, Billing and Collections:
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