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12/24/2012
Offer physicians transitioning to electronic health records (EHR) as many options as possible to accurately and efficiently document notes, including the choice of using a scribe to type the physician’s clinical information into the electronic record. The scribe, typically a medical assistant (MA), allows physicians who are struggling or unwilling to learn the software to focus entirely on patient care.
 
12/24/2012
CMS will go live with an easier-to-read redesign of the Medicare Summary Notice (MSN), which patients will be able to access at mymedicare.gov as of Jan. 3.
12/17/2012
Use a paper or electronic note template only if it “allows for full and complete collection of information,” CMS advises in a change request to the CMS Manual System effective Dec. 10.
 
12/17/2012
Watch your mailbox for a CMS letter that indicates your practice will be subject to a 1.5% payment adjustment for falling short of e-prescribing (e-Rx) requirements – even if you think the pay reduction doesn’t apply to you.
 
12/17/2012
Practices can earn additional revenue with proper billing of new G-codes. In general, the codes apply to your Medicare patients only, though some non-Medicare payers may decide to require them.
 
12/17/2012
Seize your nearby hospital’s attention by promoting your practice as the solution to preventing readmissions. You’ll improve your chances at billing new transitional care management (TCM) codes in 2013 while helping hospitals avoid a penalty that will climb to up to 3% of Medicare payments in two years.
 
12/17/2012
Reduce payer audit risk and denials related to faulty documentation in your electronic health records (EHR) with regular audits that check who entered patient information, whether notes are unique and whether errors have been corrected.
12/17/2012
These charts show initial patient upper-level E/M denial rates from 2010 and 2011, organized by the 12 specialties that bill initial patient E/M office visits most frequently. Based on a Part B News analysis of the latest Medicare claims data available, 99205 denial rates from 2010 and 2011 for each specialty are displayed in the top chart and 99204 denial rates for those years are in the bottom chart.
12/17/2012
12/10/2012
Your Medicare rates are almost certainly safe from a 26.5% sustainable growth rate (SGR) cut set to take effect Jan. 1. Just don’t expect Congress to reach an agreement on a fix before the very last week of 2012, healthcare lobbyists tell Part B News.
 

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