This year’s reporting for the Quality Payment Program will affect the 2021 payment year. Kevin J. Corcoran, COE, CPC, CPMA, FNAO, delivered his annual update at Hawaiian Eye 2019, highlighting changes CMS would be making this year for coding, payment issues, regulatory matters, administrative issues and reimbursement issues. The Medicare Physician Fee Schedule did not […]
Moderate sedation coding, also sometimes referred to as conscious sedation, is a drug-induced depression of consciousness. A patient who has been sedated in this way is relaxed and generally insensitive to pain, but remains awake and able to respond to verbal instruction. If medically necessary and properly documented, moderate sedation is a separately reported service. […]
The new codes include drugs for migraines, to initiate blood-clotting in patients on certain coagulants, chronic and hairy cell leukemia, and folic acid for chemotherapy patients. The home health codes help facilitate the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) Pioneer ACO initiative. New HCPCS Level II Codes […]
Lesion excision coding may seem complex, but reporting excision of benign (CPT Code 11400- CPT Code 11471) and malignant (11600-11646) skin lesions can be mastered in five steps. Step 1: Measure First, Cut Second: When assigning CPT® codes 11400-11646, you must know both the size of the lesion(s) excised and the width of the margins […]
New code changes number 335. The new current procedural terminology (CPT®) codes have been released with 335 code changes in 2019. There were many code revisions with guidelines, descriptions and instructional note changes. Let’s look at the highlights of many new CPT codes for 2019. There six new codes in the Evaluation and Management (E&M) […]
Modifier 74 description: Modifier 74 is used in the medical billing and coding field to indicate that a surgical procedure performed in an outpatient setting was terminated due to extenuating circumstances. When this modifier is applied to a billing code, it signifies that the procedure was initiated but discontinued before completion due to reasons beyond […]
co16 denial code description: The CO16 denial code is used in medical billing to indicate that a claim has been denied because it lacks necessary information or contains errors. It falls under the category of “Contractual Obligation” (CO) denials, which means the responsibility falls on the provider to fix the issue and resubmit the claim. […]
Billing Headaches: Is There a Code for That? Denials become even more of a threat as the finer points of medical coding and billing become overwhelming challenges for many practices. Under ICD-10, the stakes have never been higher. Recent research confirms that ICD-10 as currently implemented is seriously flawed. In 2015, the University of Illinois […]