Thank you for joining us for the LAAO Registry Case Scenario for September 2021 for sequence number 13025, follow-up cause of death. An 85-year-old female had a successful LAAO procedure one year ago without complications. The facility was unsuccessful in contacting the patient to schedule a one-year follow-up. When the provider's office was contacted for information, the facility was informed that the patient had died approximately two months prior in hospice under the care of a different physician and cause of death was unknown. When the cause of death is unknown and clarification is not available, how is sequence number 13025 coded? Because sequence 13025 has multiple selections, we have narrowed the cause down to three of the most likely answers for this case scenario. Under cardiovascular reason, other non-cardiovascular reason, or leave blank. Please take a few moments to review the documentation and question. And the answer is number three, leave blank. Leave blank would be coded because all information abstracted must come from documentation in the medical record. When a patient is coded as a follow-up status of deceased, then the data elements date of death and cause of death will have a 90% threshold to pass the DEQR. In this scenario, the patient death is known and the date of death can be approximated by the provider's information that the patient died two months ago. Since the cause of death cannot be determined even with clarification with the patient provider, sequence 13025 would be left blank. As previously mentioned, sequence number 13025 carries a threshold of 90% to pass the DEQR. Leaving this data element blank may cause a yellow follow-up submission status. If the follow-up submission status is yellow, no action is necessary. As long as the base submission is green, the follow-up data will be aggregated even if it is yellow. If there is a question about a specific follow-up data element threshold, please review the Data Quality Report Companion Guide version 1.3 on the Documents homepage under User Guide Documents. If leaving sequences blank causes your follow-up submission to have a red submission status, please contact us. Since the date of death occurred after the six-month follow-up was completed, the patient death would be captured in the one-year follow-up. Please ensure that the assessment date, sequence 13000, is coded in the one-year follow-up timeframe. The assessment date coded on the one-year follow-up can be any date within the one-year follow-up time window or the date in which the patient was supposed to be seen for their one-year follow-up. The date that the facility found out about the patient death may also be used for coding sequence 13000, as long as the date is within the timeframe. The actual date of death will be coded in sequence number 13020. When there is little to no information available on the patient mortality, the following resources may be of help. Provider's office, death certificate, if it is available, Social Security master death file. Since there is a fee to access this file, you may be able to access it through your billing department if they have access to the file. Thank you for viewing the September case scenario regarding the coding of sequence number 13025, follow-up cause of death. See you next month.

LAAO Registry Case Scenario

85-year-old female

LAAO procedure

follow-up appointment

patient mortality

coding

sequence number 13025

cause of death

85-year-old female patient