<p> Drug prices rebounded on CMS&#39;s Average Sales Price (ASP) list for the fourth quarter of 2010. On average, prices under the ASP plus 6% payment system increased by 1% after falling 0.7% during the third quarter of the year. You&#39;ll find 298 drugs increased in price while 205 had price decreases and 71 drugs remained the same.</p>

Download the September Tool of the Month, developed by DecisionHealth Professional Services, by clicking on the "Download File" link at the top of this article. This tool will help you establish an office policy for efficiently and effectively providing injections to patients. Use this customizable tool to inform the staff at your practice on how to manage injections during this flu season.

Summary: This chart looks at state-level utilization of the most common outpatient E/M services based on the latest CMS claims data, from 2008. To account for differences in state populations, the chart measures number of office visits billed per single enrollee. NOTE: The graph captures five high-utilization states and five low-utilization states, all with comparable Medicare patient populations. Population data is based on CMS beneficiary enrollment statistics. NOTE: The E/M services examined were 99201-99205 for new office visits and 99211-99215 for established visits.

This week's question is answered by Regan Bode, CPC, CPC-H, CPMA, CEMC, ACS-EM, content manager for DecisionHealth and consultant for DecisionHealth Professional Services.

Q.  I have always looked for our physicians to state "critical care" in their notes before allowing them to bill critical care services. But I am not sure this is required - do they need to state critical care or can we still bill critical care when they only document their time with the patient if the documentation supports a critical care service. Can you direct me?

Your non-physician practitioners (NPPs) stand to benefit from several major provisions in CMS's proposed 2011 Physician Fee Schedule (PFS). But there's always room for improvement, according to two top NPP groups in their official fee schedule comments released earlier this month.

Hiring a certified registered nurse anesthetist (CRNA) straight out of school can cause headaches when you try to enroll the provider into the Medicare program. The CRNA needs to have a set of certifications and licenses before he or she can be enrolled and start receiving Medicare payments. 

Summary: How often are non-physician practitioners (NPPs) billing directly for office visits? This chart measures E/M billing by most NPP types at the state level, expressing E/M utilization as a percentage of all NPP services billed to Medicare in each state.

This week's question is answered by Regan Bode, CPC, CPC-H, CPMA, CEMC, ACS-EM, content manager for DecisionHealth and consultant for DecisionHealth Professional Services.

Q: Can NPPs bill directly for administering flu and pneumococcal vaccines using roster billing? Can these vaccinations be billed incident-to? What is the best strategy?

This week's question is answered by Regan Bode, CPC, CPC-H, CPMA, CEMC, ACS-EM, content manager for DecisionHealth and consultant for DecisionHealth Professional Services.

Q. Two of our major payers - one of which is Medicare and the other is Healthpoint, the distributor for OASIS - disagree on the right CPT codes our physicians should use for the application of the product. Healthpoint suggests codes 15430-15431 (apply acellular xenograft) would be appropriate. Who's right?

You'll need seven components - whether they're contained within one electronic health record (EHR) system or spread out in modules from different vendors - to meet stage 1 meaningful use criteria, experts say. This concise illustration shows which functions and capabilities are performed by each component, as well as how they work together.