Recover more of your practice's hard-earned money and send fewer patients to collections by effective use of patient payment plans, experts say. High, persistent unemployment numbers mean you and your peers are likely to see an increasing number of patients who can't come up with the cash to cover their share of the balance.

Protests filed against five Medicare Administrative Contractors (MACs) in 2009 are still holding up MAC transitions in 14 states this year. Ten of 15 MAC contracts have been awarded and implemented, but CMS is working to address issues raised in protests filed against the five remaining MAC awards, an agency official tells Part B News.

You can recover money owed to your practice quickly by taking non-paying patients to small claims court rather than sending them to collections, experts tell Part B News. Local laws control the maximum amount of money in controversy for a case to be decided in small claims court, but it's not unusual to win back $10,000 or even $20,000 for the trouble of filing just 10-15 small claims.

You have the option of taking non-paying patients to small claims court, so long as you know they aren't actually indigent and have failed to make a good-faith effort to pay, experts say. Here are the steps needed to see this route through to the end.

Medicare providers not in CMS's Provider Enrollment Chain and Ownership System (PECOS) will become a target for enrollment revalidation in 2010, according to a recent agency transmittal. Act promptly when you get a revalidation request - otherwise you will lose your billing privileges.

There's no clear path to a Medicare pay fix now that a proposal to delay the devastating 21% cut for seven months was removed from the Senate jobs bill a day after its official introduction. You're now just days away from the drastic reduction in payment rates going through.

The highest denial rates for E/M codes are found in a few select hotspots around the country, according to a Part B News analysis of the latest available CMS claims data. These 10 geographic practice cost index (GPCI) locations had the highest denial rates in 2008 and most were also among the top 10 in 2006.

We're one year into the Obama administration and there is still no CMS administrator nominated, confirmed and sworn-in to office. However, CMS is moving to restructure internal management of departments that create and implement Medicare regulations.

This week's question is answered by Margie Scalley Vaught, CPC, coding content specialist for DecisionHealth.

Q. Doctors from our family practice rotate coverage of inpatients with doctors from another family practice on weekends. However, the attending physician always bills for the visit. Everyone feels that it all comes out about even over the year. We have been told we can no longer bill like this. If this is true, what is the proper way to bill for these visits?