No legislative wrangling can take place until April 12.
Unless Congress steps in soon, you could be facing the 21.2 percent Medicare pay cut that you’ve feared since January.
Despite several Congressional attempts to cobble together another temporary pay fix...
Test your 2010 consultation coding understanding with these questions and answers.
Consultation coding has every practice on edge this year. Ensure that you’ve got a handle on this complicated coding and billing situation by taking this three-question quiz and then...
Grasping 93010’s effect on new vs. established patient status could bring a $58 reward.
Whether you call them ECGs or EKGs, chances are you see a lot of electrocardiograms in your practice. That means that even the tiniest coding errors...
Forget about incident-to in the facility, but consider this similar billing technique.
ED coders that have never heard of “incident-to” billing have nothing to worry about, as you cannot code for “incident-to” services in the hospital. Coders that don’t understand...
Wrap your brain around using letters in your diagnosis codes.
If you aren’t curious about how the ICD-9 codes crosswalk to ICD-10, maybe you should be.
“The transition date for ICD-10 codes is Oct 1, 2013,” stressed CMS’s Stewart Streimer...
Medicare clears up confusion surrounding ‘8-hour rule.’
Reporting your FP’s observation services can be tricky business, as there is confusion about how, when, and why to choose from one observation code set or another.
Add to that a common misconception...
Don’t let ‘wrong surgery’ modifier mistakes stall your reimbursement.
You use modifier TC for the technical component of a test. So logically, you should use modifier PC for the professional component, right? Wrong. But many coders are making that mistake...
Knowing how to use add-on codes can net you up to $258 in additional reimbursement.
CPT is full of “add-on” codes, additions to minor and major surgical procedures as well as to E/M services. Fortunately for urology there are not…
Attach your procedure notes and the OIG’s report to pack extra punch.
Even if you follow all of CMS’s rules in reporting modifier 25 (Significant, separately identifiable evaluation and management service by the same physician on the same day of the…
Medicare’s elimination of payment for consultation services has caused mass confusion throughout the coding community, not just due to the changes it has caused in your billing procedures, but also due to lack of information from CMS.
In an apparent…
Understand ‘significant’ and ‘separate’ to earn a gold star.
Knowing when to report modifiers and choosing the best one for each situation can be an easy trip-up for coders. If you find yourself especially befuddled…
Check your 2010 consultation coding savvy.
Find out if you’re set to properly code your physician’s consultation services this year by tackling three problems and their solutions.
Check With Your MAC for Guidance
When…
Related articles:Test your 2010 consultation coding understanding with these questions. Consultation coding has every practice on edge this year. Ensure that you’ve got a handle on this complicated coding and billing situation by trying your hand at this question. Question: When a visit with a Medicare inpatient that would normally have been coded as a consultation does not [...] Related articles:
Improve your reimbursement chances by applying modifier 58 in this situation. When your surgeon targets the brain or spine with stereotactic radiosurgery (also called gamma knife surgery) to treat multiple lesions over multiple sessions, you need to know two crucial things: what stereotactic radiosurgery codes to use and how many units to include. Take this three-question challenge [...] Related articles:
Caution: Keep enough paperwork on hand to back up EHR. Transitioning to the world of Electronic Health Records (EHR) can make your coding easier on many levels, but don’t take it for granted. Physicians often fall short in their review of systems (ROS) documentation whether you use paper charts or rely on EHR, but you can [...] Related articles:
CMS won’t fix CCI blunder until version 16.1, to be released in the spring. If your heart skipped a beat when you saw that January’s Correct Coding Initiative (CCI) edits bundled catheter ablations with electrophysiology (EP) studies, you weren’t alone. Good news: CMS has decided to delete the edits retroactively because their addition was a mistake, according [...] Related articles: