kmiles

Can Coronary Artery Disease (CAD) be coded by checking the Arteriosclerotic Heart Disease (ASHD) in section I? What is the difference?

Good Morning All! The title should have read "IV Medication/Fluids Post OP". The RAI reads "Do not code services that were provided solely in conjuction with a surgical or diagnostic procedure and the immedicate post-operative or post-procedure recovery period". So ... how long is the post-procedure period? Can pain meds and fluids for the day after surgury be coded? How about all the rest: intake/output, ostomy care, oxygen, suctioning, transfusions, ventilator? If these are NOT coded for the entire hospital stay, I would rarely code these services at all. Hmmm ...

Wow, sure makes me think. My job is as you described your last one: only me for 109 beds, do everything and spend 40+ hours doing it; except that I am paid hourly and get overtime. I am burned out, and I have only been doing MDS for 5 months! Just venting too! Good luck with the new position! Kim

Thanks for the encouragement. I have been the MDS Coordinator for a 109 bed facility for only four months now. I am not sure that this is my cup-o-tea, even though the management has been pleased with my RUG scores and care plans. It feels like I am back in school, doing assessments and care plans that will never be seen or used. The board of nursing said that the complaint on my licence should be removed sometime this month (March), so I will try for another (or at least a second) job when that is cleared up. I live in a small town with one hospital and two nursing homes. I would have to move to Phoenix to be in a new hospital. Thanks again for the reply. Kim

I wear scrubs because they are comfortable, easy to pick out in the morning, and because I often step in and assist the CNAs when I see help is needed. I am the only MDS coordinator in a 109 bed facility, which is bad because I am always trying to catch up with the assessments -- but good because I run my own office and wear/do as I please. :wink2:

Hi! Sorry about the insult that MDSing is not "real nursing", but sometimes I feel that I am losing all those clinical skills that I worked so hard to aquire during school and will never be able to go back on the floor again. I became an MDS Coordinator after being an RN for only one month by "accident". The accident was that I gave a medication by the wrong route. I was subsequently asked to leave the ER and return to Med/Surg where I had worked as an LPN for over a year. Not wishing to be back under the Med/Surg manager I knew was a tyrant, I chose to leave the hospital. I was hired by a SNF to do "Medicare forms" not knowing anything about MDS. I don't see myself doing this for the rest of my career. So, how do I keep up my skills, or better yet, how do I apply for a job as a clinical RN after having had close to no previous clinical experience as an RN? Would a hospital even hire me into a new grad program? Kim