You risk being censured for compromising patient care and your office could be flooded with phone calls, faxes, and unexpected patient visits when you don’ t perform the mandatory face-to-face encounter for home health care certifications, experts tell Part B News. “The face-to-face requirement is not something the home health agencies or doctors wanted,” says Ann Rambusch, a home health consultant in Round Rock, Texas.

You can now attest to having achieved meaningful use in 2011 and theoretically get up to $18,000 per provider under the Electronic Health Record (EHR) Incentive Program – though very few practices are in a position to do so this early, experts say. To report that you met meaningful use and are thus eligible for incentive money, you must register all your providers with a CMS website called the EHR Incentive Program Registration & Attestation System.

You can use a new CMS online tool to see how close your providers are to meeting stage 1 meaningful use requirements, which would yield $18,000 per provider in federal bonus dollars under the Electronic Health Record (EHR) Incentive Program.

This chart compares specialists’ E/M utilization and denial rates by code level, focusing on the most common (level 3) and the top two levels (4 and 5). NOTE: Primary care is the top biller of E/Ms and was thus not included to emphasize the specialty data. Level 3 E/Ms retain their claim to being the top level billed in terms of sheer volume, accounting for the largest slice of the utilization pie for seven of the 12 specialties analyzed. However, five specialties – cardiology, hematology/oncology, neurology, pulmonary disease and rheumatology – bill more level 4s than level 3s or level 5s.

You might receive an unexpected bonus payment from Medicare thanks to the Primary Care Incentive Payment (PCIP) program, Part B News has learned. It would be unexpected because your providers didn’t actually furnish any primary care. At least one practice in Pennsylvania got a surprise electronic payment worth $2,700 from Highmark, the Medicare Administrative Contractor (MAC). But this practice consisted only of pain management specialists and four physician assistants.

You have just five months to choose an electronic health record (EHR) system, negotiate a contract and make preparations for implementation – any delays will drastically decrease your chances of collecting the first $18,000 bonus check, paid per provider, under the EHR Incentive Program, experts say. To be ready to demonstrate meaningful use on Oct. 1, 2012 – just 17 months from now – you must be ready to have an EHR system installed by October of this year, according to an expert’s roadmap.