You must have your physicians personally register and attest for bonus payments under the Electronic Health Record (EHR) Incentive Program, using CMS’s new online website, an agency official tells Part B News. However, by preventing third parties such as practice managers and office staff from doing the job, physicians will see work flow disruptions, according to your peers.

CMS won’t reduce your pay by making you bill CPT’s new subsequent observation codes when your doctor evaluates a patient that someone else placed under observation. But CPT has made it clear that its intention was for the new codes (99224-99226) to be used in this situation, despite the fact they pay about 40% less than the codes CMS instructs you to use for Medicare claims.

Denial rates for most surgical procedures declined from 2008 to 2009, continuing a trend that began in 2007 (PBN 1/25/10). This chart examines denial rates for 10 surgical procedures that have high Medicare utilization and represent a wide variety of specialties. NOTE: The utilization minimum was 100,000 services billed annually.

We have a physician doing lesion removals and having the patient come back two weeks later to bill for the service. Minor lesion removals have a 10-day global. The patient is coming back after the end of the global window, but it is still suture removal and seems like it should be part of the global. The provider insists on billing, because it is outside of the global time window as it is outside the global. What can I show the provider to prove is not a billable service?