Tag: CMS

EHR

Is Your EHR Ready For PDGM?

When the Patient-Driven Groupings Model (PDGM) launches Jan. 1, 2020, leveraging tools and resources to ensure compliance will be critical to a successful transition. Home health care providers already have one helpful tool in place: the electronic health record (EHR). By incorporating workflow efficiencies, alerts, customizable features and feedback reporting capabilities, EHRs can provide visibility […]
Evaluation and Management Service Codes

AMA on Evaluation and Management Service Codes Guidelines

Medical coders who were unsure what documentation non-Medicare payers would expect in light of the Patients Over Paperwork Initiative now have more to go on. The initiative reduced documentation requirements for outpatient evaluation and management service codes (CPT® 99201-99215) provided to Medicare Part B patients beginning in 2021. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) indicated in their initiative that, although […]
Medicare Advantage Plan

Medicare Advantage Plan Denials: Is That Convoluted or What?

Medicare Advantage Plan contracts are “take-it-or-leave-it” agreements Many questions are swirling about regarding Medicare Advantage Plan (MAP) denials asking what to do about the increasing number and given reasons.  I’ve heard or read some amazing stories where payers have gone to astounding lengths to deny claims.  Answers are also swirling about based on understandings of […]
Medical Coding Services

CMS To Revamp Coding For New Medical Technology

Dive Brief CMS Administrator Seema Verma announced Thursday the agency will overhaul coding regulations that she argues have hindered beneficiary access to new medical technology. Medical device companies will now be able to apply for a new permanent Healthcare Common Procedure Coding System (HCPCS) code twice a year, instead of annually. CMS also recently eliminated […]
Clinical Denials

Clinical Denials: Prevention Is The Best Medicine

Clinical denials are a fact of life for hospitals. Providers must contend with a number of government audits conducted by several different organizations. On the private payer side, hospitals must comply with complex approval processes related to prior authorizations, admission status and medical necessity. At Becker’s Hospital Review’s 10th Annual Meeting in Chicago, R1 RCM hosted a […]
Pain Management

Pain Management and The Global Period

Pain management during the global period of a procedure, if related to that procedure, is not separately reportable. If a provider other than the operating provider performs follow-up care, you must be careful to avoid “unbundling” of that follow-up care. The global period, or global surgical package, bundles all care typically related to surgical service into a […]
PSYCHIATRIC FACILITIES PAYMENTS

Psychiatric Facilities Could See Payments of $75 Million In 2020

CMS has released the inpatient psychiatric facility proposed rule. Approximately $75million is projected to be paid to inpatient psychiatric facilities (IPF), according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) proposed 2020 inpatient prospective payment system (IPPS) released on April 19. IPF-PPS applies to inpatient services for psychiatric hospitals and distinct psychiatric units of […]