This month's tool is a comprehensive list of the average sales price (ASP) drug prices for the second quarter. You will be able to view an Excel file of the  the changes with the first quarter changes alongside for comparison.  A PDF version of the data is also available for download here.

This month's tool is a ready-to-use encounter form for your annual wellness visits tailored specifically for patients receiving their subsequent visit of this preventive service CMS initiated in 2011.

Struggling to collect from patients with high deductible health plans (HDHPs)? This tool gives you multi-faceted bullet points on how to develop a workflow process to improve collections from both new and existing patients.

CMS is giving you extremely vague instructions in developing your own HRA form to add to the 2012 annual wellness visit (AWV) paperwork. Well rather than do the leg work yourself, use this tool as a template for your practice's HRA form.

This sample letter will serve as a great tool for your practice when going to renegotiate your reimbursement rates with your private payer.  You can use the letter, in PDF format,  as a guide when writing your own renegotiation letter, says the letter's author Brian Agnew, president of Supero Healthcare Solutions in Austin, Texas.

The key: Your letter should be straightforward and brief, no more than two pages, dictating what you want to renegotiate and a glimpse of why your practice is important to the payer and the leverage it can offer, experts say (PBN 10/31/11). The key is to explicitly say what you want to do without tipping your hand, Agnew says.

This tool is a handy quick-reference chart that shows all five new Q-codes for flu vaccines, introduced in 2011. The chart, which in Microsoft Excel 97-2003 format, can be printed and posted in your office to help your billers, coders and clinicians distinguish between the Q-codes, listing their name, manufacturer, chareg and administration code, and dosage guidelines.

Download this month's tool -- a spreadsheet showing how to set up utilization data and compare your allowables.

Use this tool to help calculate how much money you’re being paid by each payer and plan, for each of your top 25 codes, using the payers’ different allowables and your own utilization data to see whether one or more of your payers is paying much lower than others and your contract needs to be renegotiated.

Download this month's tool -- a spreadsheet showing time thresholds for base E/M codes and prolonged service codes -- to help you capture extra revenue from time-consuming, counseling-dominated encounters. You can use the time thresholds to determine whether you can bill a prolonged service code (99354-99359) or whether a standalone base E/M code must be billed, based on typical time as defined by CPT.

Download this month's tool -- a labeled template of a successful appeals letter -- to help you quickly turn around denied claims, especially denials that were caused by simple mistakes. You can use the format of this appeal letter to develop your own variation that accounts for your specific specialty, denials and patient cases.