The social determinants of health (SDoH) have been a top news item for several years. Since the advent of the pandemic, however, they’ve been eclipsed by interwoven themes of access disparities, racial injustice, and massive public health gaps. The virus has torn through the world’s poorest communities, and ripped the band-aid off of reactive and short-term efforts to address public health. As a result, one new hot topic is racism as a public health issue, with reports on it being published fast and furiously.
The American Public Health Association lists 20 states that have declared racism a public health crisis: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Washington State, and Wisconsin.
The implications associated with this:
The American Public Health Association calls for swift allocation of resources and clearly defined strategic action. Medical experts are calling for more attention to preventative and community-based care. Even the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation and Institute for Healthcare Improvement have released statements and amped up their actions. The clock is ticking, as more “have-nots” are appearing daily, needing far more resources than available.
For this week’s Monitor Mondays Listeners Survey, we asked our audience their views on this important topic. Over 50 percent of our audience responded to this survey asking whether racism is a public health issue, with results able to be viewed here.
Programming Note: Ellen Fink-Samnick is a permanent panelist on Monitor Mondays. Listen to her live reporting every Monday at 10 a.m. EST.
I am sure everyone agrees that not only is providing healthcare complicated, but so are all the administrative aspects of healthcare. And as a result,
Let me start this article by asking for your help. Flash back to 2013. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) at that time
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Accurately determining the principal diagnosis is critical for compliant billing, appropriate reimbursement, and valid quality reporting — yet it remains one of the most subjective and error-prone areas in inpatient coding. In this expert-led session, Cheryl Ericson, RN, MS, CCDS, CDIP, demystifies the complexities of principal diagnosis assignment, bridging the gap between coding rules and clinical reality. Learn how to strengthen your organization’s coding accuracy, reduce denials, and ensure your documentation supports true medical necessity.
Denials continue to delay reimbursement, increase administrative burden, and threaten financial stability across healthcare organizations. This essential webcast tackles the root causes—rising payer scrutiny, fragmented workflows, inconsistent documentation, and underused analytics—and offers proven, data-driven strategies to prevent and overturn denials. Attendees will gain practical tools to strengthen documentation and coding accuracy, engage clinicians effectively, and leverage predictive analytics and AI to identify risks before they impact revenue. Through real-world case examples and actionable guidance, this session empowers coding, CDI, and revenue cycle professionals to shift from reactive appeals to proactive denial prevention and revenue protection.
Sepsis remains one of the most frequently denied and contested diagnoses, creating costly revenue loss and compliance risks. In this webcast, Angela Comfort, DBA, MBA, RHIA, CDIP, CCS, CCS-P, provides practical, real-world strategies to align documentation with coding guidelines, reconcile Sepsis-2 and Sepsis-3 definitions, and apply compliant queries. You’ll learn how to identify and address documentation gaps, strengthen provider engagement, and defend diagnoses against payer scrutiny—equipping you to protect reimbursement, improve SOI/ROM capture, and reduce audit vulnerability in this high-risk area.
Only ICD10monitor delivers what you need: updates on must-know changes associated with the FY26 IPPS, including new ICD-10-CM/PCS codes, CCs/MCCs, and MS-DRGs, plus insights, analysis and answers to your questions from two of the country’s most respected subject matter experts.
Get clear, practical answers to Medicare’s most confusing regulations. Join Dr. Ronald Hirsch as he breaks down real-world compliance challenges and shares guidance your team can apply right away.
Federal auditors are zeroing in on Inpatient Rehabilitation Facility (IRF) and hospital rehab unit services, with OIG and CERT audits leading to millions in penalties—often due to documentation and administrative errors, not quality of care. Join compliance expert Michael Calahan, PA, MBA, to learn the five clinical “pillars” of IRF-PPS admissions, key documentation requirements, and real-life case lessons to help protect your revenue.
During this essential RACmonitor webcast Michael Calahan, PA, MBA Certified Compliance Officer, will clarify the rules, dispel common misconceptions, and equip you with practical strategies to code, document, and bill high-risk split/shared, incident-to & critical care E/M services with confidence. Don’t let audit risks or revenue losses catch your organization off guard — learn exactly what federal auditors are looking for and how to ensure your documentation and reporting stand up to scrutiny.
Learn how to navigate the proposed elimination of the Inpatient-Only list. Gain strategies to assess admission status, avoid denials, protect compliance, and address impacts across Medicare and non-Medicare payors. Essential insights for hospitals.
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