The latest Medicare trustees report spells doom and gloom for the Medicare program in less than 10 years unless major action is taken. The Medicare trust fund will be exhausted by 2017, two years earlier than projected in last year's report (PBN 3/31/08).

This month's question is answered by Sean Weiss CPC, vice president of DecisionHealth Professional Services. 

Q.  Can we bill incident-to when a Nurse Practitioner is the "supervising provider" in the office? For example, can a PA bill under an NP's number?

This chart gives an estimate of the number of services billed to Medicare by each individual NPP, per specialty. NPP specialties with less than 30,000 individuals enrolled in Medicare were excluded from analysis. Every single physical therapist bills nearly four times the number of services that the next highest NPP specialty does.

Using non-physician practitioners (NPPs) effectively will allow your practice to treat more patients and ultimately bring in more revenue (NPP Report 12/22/08). Also, advanced practice nurses (APNs) and physician assistants can fill unique voids for less overhead (NPP Report 3/30/09).

A CMS rule tightening supervision requirements for outpatient therapeutic services does not apply to physical therapy services, NPP Report has learned.

A recent promise by health industry leaders to support President Obama's goal of reducing health spending by $2 trillion over the next decade may be more about political showmanship than a commitment to change, experts tell Part B News.

This chart shows the breakdown of how nonclinical full-time equivalent (FTE) staff spent their time, with an emphasis on billing and reimbursement.

You should lose the habit of using unspecified codes while getting your doctors into the habit of writing more detailed documentation to prepare for the switch to the ICD-10-CM diagnosis code set, experts tell Part B News.

You don't have to worry about making sure the ambulatory surgery center (ASC) has followed the notification rules we told you about last week if it's medically necessary for a patient to have a surgery on the same day a procedure is scheduled.