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Every release and every piece of in-flight work for Medical Auto Coding. Filter by status, kind, or tag, then read the full notes below.
| Status | Kind | What changed | Version | Ticket |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fix merged | Improvement | Routine extreme-age and payer-bundled add-ons no longer raise an alert, and physical status modifiers follow your facility setting exactly | No version | No ticket |
Work that is planned, in progress, or merged and waiting for a production deploy. It is not released yet.
A routine extreme-age add-on no longer raises an alert. Before this release, every claim that billed 99100 carried a review alert asking a coder to confirm the patient's age. The autocoder had already verified that age against the date of service. That alert is gone, and so is the alert for a 99100 the autocoder withheld. The decision is on the claim instead:
No alert when a payer class bundles the add-ons. Medicare bundles 99100, 99116, 99135, and 99140 into the base anesthesia code, and your configuration can list other payer classes that do the same. Those claims no longer carry an informational alert. The codes move to the bundled procedures, and the reason on each entry names the payer class that bundles it.
One new alert, for demographics that cannot both be right. If the patient's date of birth is later than the date of service, the claim now carries the Date of Birth Is After the Date of Service alert (HARDSTOP, severity 8), and the extreme-age add-on is withheld. Every date-anchored rule reads those two dates, so this is a demographics question, not an add-on question. The alert fires on every specialty.
A new option to review a 99140 that rests on weak evidence. The autocoder trusts a documented emergency and raises no alert for it. Your organization can now ask for a review of the weak cases only. With the Emergency Add-On 99140 Billed On Weak Documentation rule turned on (FINANCIAL, severity 5), a coder is asked when a billed 99140 cites documentation that shows neither a physical status with the E suffix nor a statement that a delay in treatment would significantly increase the threat to life or body part. The rule is off unless you ask for it. A record that reaches you only as handwriting still raises the handwritten emergency-status alert.
The 99116 and 99135 review alert reads more precisely. It now asks you to confirm the record documents deliberate total body hypothermia (99116) or deliberate controlled hypotension (99135) as an anesthetic technique. The cooling and the low blood pressure that come with cardiopulmonary bypass are not the same thing, and they do not support these codes.
Why: a review alert is a question for a human. When the autocoder has no question, it should record what it did and stay quiet. The extreme-age alert asked a coder to re-check arithmetic the autocoder had already verified against the ASA rule, on a large share of anesthesia cases. The payer-class alert reported a decision your own configuration had made.
Physical status modifiers (P1 to P6) now follow your facility setting exactly. If your facility turns physical status modifiers off, no P1 to P6 value reaches a claim line, no matter where it came from. Before this fix, a physical status value that the coding step placed on a code by itself could stay on the claim after the setting said no. When the autocoder removes such a value, it records the removal with the Physical Status Modifier Removed Per Facility Configuration alert (INFORMATIONAL, severity 2). The documented ASA status still shows on the claim when the record has one.
Two new checks protect facilities that do bill physical status. A P1 to P6 value can be on a claim when the record documents no ASA physical status. The Physical Status Modifier Without a Documented ASA Status alert (FINANCIAL, severity 5) then asks a coder to confirm the status. If the setting is off and a value still slips through, the Physical Status Modifier Present Although the Facility Disables Them alert (FINANCIAL, severity 5) reports it.
The extreme-age add-on 99100 is never reported with 00326, 00561, 00834, or 00836. These anesthesia codes already describe a patient younger than 1 year, and CPT does not allow 99100 with them. The autocoder now moves such a 99100 to the bundled procedures, with a reason that names the anesthesia code. No bypass modifier is added.
99100 is re-decided when the demographics arrive late. When the date of birth is missing at coding time and the automatic gap fill recovers it from the record, the autocoder runs the age test again. A patient who qualifies gets 99100 back on the billable lines. A patient the recovered date of birth disproves loses a 99100 that was billing: it moves to the bundled procedures with the reason. The code also stays bundled when the anesthesia code excludes it, when a facility rule withholds it, or when the payer class does not pay it. Before this fix the code stayed off the claim with no trace.
Configuration problems are now visible on the claim. A qualifying circumstance setting that cannot be read as written raises the Qualifying Circumstance Configuration Is Malformed alert (FINANCIAL, severity 5) and names the fault and the posture the autocoder applied. A processing rules setting that cannot be read raises the Processing Rules Could Not Be Read alert (HARDSTOP, severity 9). Every claim now records which facility configuration built it and which qualifying circumstance posture applied to its payer class.
Facility instructions now follow GI and OB cases. An additional coding instruction configured for the anesthesia lane now also applies when the autocoder handles the case as a GI or obstetric case. Before this fix the instruction was dropped on those cases.
What to look out for:
Teams that used the extreme-age alert as a prompt to review patient demographics will not see it any more. If you want a reviewer on every 99100, ask your Hank representative to turn the alert on for the rule that adds the code:
"processingRules": {
"special_circumstances_99100": {
"action": {
"setBillable": true,
"createHRE": true,
"hreTag": "FINANCIAL",
"hreSeverity": 4,
"hreReviewerRole": "CODER",
"hreTemplate": "99100 billed for an extreme-age patient - confirm the date of birth."
}
}
}The same shape works on the 99140 rule. Give every key: the switch turns the alert on, and the other keys set the type, the severity, the suggested reviewer, and the text the reviewer reads.
Two more points. The "enabled" switch on the physical status rule is now ignored; only its value decides. If you set the value to false and also switched the rule off, the modifiers used to appear anyway. They now stop, which lowers the base units billed on P3 and higher. If you switched the rule off but left the value true, nothing changes. And if your reports counted the informational payer-class alert to find bundled add-ons, count the bundled procedures on the claim instead.