Some sort of reduction to your payments will be needed to pay for the cost of comprehensive health reform, according to the veteran lawmaker leading the reform effort.

"There are some provider expenses, reimbursements that ... according to [the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission or MedPAC], should be trimmed a little bit," said Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. "And we're going to get that done. And that's going to help quite a bit."

A group of technology companies hopes to educate half a million physicians this year about opportunities to digitize their practices presented by the economic stimulus legislation known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).

HHS and the department's Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) last month published roadmaps for implementing the massive health IT cash infusion from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The plans lay out timetables for government actions but leave some key questions unanswered.

What do concepts like patient satisfaction and business process management have to do with electronic health records? Pretty much everything, according to some who have led the complex workflow redesign that often results when a practice transitions to EHR.

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

Q. In order for a physician to bill observation services to Medicare, must the patient be located in an area the hospital designates as an "observation" area?

You're required to file a claim even when you don't accept assignment of the service, according to CMS. The agency recently spelled out its policy on your mandatory claims filing obligations and non-compliance is steep - there's a $2,000 fine for each violation of the requirement.

Usage of modifier 22 (increased procedural services) by you and your peers dropped 11% from 2005 to 2007, while Medicare denials of claims using the modifier steadily increased by more than two percentage points over that time, according to a Part B News analysis of CMS claims data.

The Practicing Physicians Advisory Council (PPAC) grilled CMS on its plans to use physician resource use reports that measure cost for individual physicians to the Medicare program. PPAC members believe the reports  could hurt practices if they are publicized, especially if information is incorrect.

You should not have received any demand letters or record requests from Recovery Audit Contractors (RACs) since March 2008, CMS officials said during a June 1 meeting of the Practicing Physicians Advisory Committee (PPAC).