National Thyroid Awareness Month
Published on
Wednesday, January 19, 2022
Did You Know?
January is Thyroid Awareness Month.
Why Should You Care?
As a health care consumer, it is important to understand what the thyroid gland does, what thyroid hormone impacts and what can happen when your thyroid gland is not functioning properly. According to the CDC (link)
- The thyroid gland, located in the front of the neck just below the Adam’s apple, takes iodine from your diet and makes thyroid hormone. Thyroid hormone affects your physical energy, temperature, weight, and mood.
- In general, there are two broad groups of thyroid disorders: abnormal function and abnormal growth (nodules) in the gland.
- Thyroid disorders are common, especially in older people and women. Most thyroid problems can be detected and treated.
- Abnormal function is usually related to the gland producing too little thyroid hormone (hypothyroidism) or too much thyroid hormone (hyperthyroidism).
- Benign nodules in the thyroid are common, usually do not cause serious health problems, can occasionally put pressure on the neck and cause trouble with swallowing, breathing, or speaking if too large.
- Thyroid cancers are much less common than benign nodules and with treatment, the cure rate for thyroid cancer is more than 90 percent. You can learn more about Thyroid Cancer and the annual Medicare Treatment costs of Thyroid Cancer in a related RealTime Medicare Data (RTMD) infographic in this week’s newsletter.
As a health care provider, it is important to be aware that MS-DRGs 625, 626, and 627 (Thyroid, Parathyroid & Thyroglossal Procedures with MCC, with CC, without CC/MCC respectively), have been under scrutiny by the Comprehensive Error Rate Testing (CERT) and Supplemental Medicare Review Contractor (SMRC).
The 2018 CERT Medicare Fee-for-Service Improper Payment Rate Report noted an improper payment rate of 49.1% for this DRG group. Subsequently, in February 2020, CMS tasked Noridian, as the SMRC, to perform data analysis and DRG validation reviews of the same DRG group. Noridian published their review results in October 2021 (link) citing a 12% error rate.
What Can You Do?
As a healthcare consumer:
- Have your doctor check for thyroid disease during a standard physical exam by palpation of the thyroid gland.
- There are two standard blood tests that your doctor may recommend. One measures your thyroid hormone level (T4) and another measures thyrotropin (TSH) which is hormone secreted from the pituitary gland that controls how much thyroid hormone your thyroid makes.
Treatment for thyroid disease will be specific to the type and severity of the thyroid disorder and the age and overall health of the patient.
As a healthcare provider, one of the reasons cited by the SMRC for errors was providers not responding to requests for documentation within 45 calendar days of the additional documentation request (ADR). Noridian has a Documentation Requests webpage (link) which includes a link to an example ADR letter which provides guidance on how you can submit medical records.
Article Author: Beth Cobb, RN, BSN, ACM, CCDS
Beth Cobb, RN, BSN, ACM, CCDS, is the Manager of Clinical Analytics at Medical Management Plus, Inc. Beth has over twenty-five years of experience in healthcare including eleven years in Case Management at a large multi-facility health system. In her current position, Beth is a principle writer for MMP’s Wednesday@One weekly e-newsletter, an active member of our HIPAA Compliance Committee, MMP’s Education Department Program Director and co-developer of MMP’s proprietary Compliance Protection Assessment Tool.
