On Aug. 15, 1935, Will Rogers died in a plane crash near Point Barrow, Alaska. He is an Oklahoma legend and one of the best political satirists and commentators ever. I often wonder what his commentary would be on the state of U.S. politics in 2019. As an aside, Oklahoma City has two airports named […]
The American Hospital Association is calling on CMS to eliminate some “temporary CPT codes” to ensure that coding and documentation requirements are consistent for outpatient billing. Hospitals use healthcare procedure coding system level 2 codes primarily to bill for products, supplies and services not included in current procedural terminology codes, according to CMS. This includes billing […]
Changes to payment, coding, and documentation policies for evaluation and management (E/M) services finalized in the 2019 Physician Fee Schedule (PFS) final rule are necessary to align with the American Medical Association’s (AMA) revisions to the 2021 CPT code set for office/outpatient E/M visits, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). The proposed policy changes for E/M visits are […]
January 1, 2020, marks the start of the Appropriate Use Criteria (AUC) program educational and operations testing period, at which time Medicare Administrative Contractors (MACs) will begin accepting AUC-related modifiers on claims for advanced diagnostic imaging services furnished to Medicare Part B patients. The voluntary participation period ends December 31, 2019. Know AUC Program Requirements […]
Cliff notes for the FY20 ICD-10-CM Guidelines for Coding and Reporting. EDITOR’S NOTE: Senior healthcare consultant Laurie Johnson reported this story live during Aug. 13 edition of Talk Ten Tuesday. The following is an edited transcript of her reporting. Last week, I announced that the 2020 ICD-10-CM guidelines were finally released on Aug. 6, 2019. I […]
Final rules will impact nearly every type of healthcare provider. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) presented us with quite a number of Medicare payment rules in the last week or so, referencing almost every type of provider in the program. The final rules included the Fiscal Year (FY) 2020 Medicare Hospital Inpatient […]
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is proposing changes to the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule (PFS) and the Quality Payment Program as part of its effort to reduce provider burden. “Clinicians are drowning in paperwork and reporting requirements caused by cumbersome government rules and regulations,” said CMS Administrator Seema Verma in a press […]
The agency dropped proposals for three key payment programs aimed at cutting administrative burden and boosting price transparency. CMS has released three new proposed payment programs that aim to reduce administrative burden, put patients over paperwork, and increase price transparency for patients, the agency said in a statement emailed to journalists. Specifically, CMS has proposed […]
President Trump issues an executive order on kidney disease and a new payment model for radiation therapy. As reported by Dr. Ronald Hirsch on the RACmonitor.com Monitor Mondays webcast, last week the president issued an executive order on kidney disease. The executive order was touted by many in the medical community because all are aware […]
Quality work reduces the burden of the denial management process. When my children were young, they really enjoyed the movie “The Neverending Story.” It’s about a boy who reads a magical book that tells a story of a young warrior whose task is to stop a dark force called “The Nothing” from engulfing a mystical […]