Do practices really see an increase in revenue after changing from paper-based records to an electronic health record (EHR) system? It appears the answer varies significantly based on practice specialty, according to a survey of 1,324 practices nationwide by the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA).

Download the December Tool of the Month to help you determine how your claims stack up against 1995 and 1997 E/M guidelines (see story).

HHS has issued an interim final rule limiting the amount of premium dollars an insurance company can spend on administrative costs - which will mean 80% to 85% must be allocated for patient services starting
in 2011.

Negotiating 11 limits to most favored nation (MFN) clauses in your private payer contracts will protect your rights to be fairly compensated for your physicians' services and will ultimately protect your practice's bottom line (PBN 11/22/10, PBN 12/6/10).

Your peers use the 1995 E/M guidelines more commonly than the 1997 guidelines, but that doesn't mean one is more useful or somehow better than the other, according to an unscientific Part B News reader survey. The two guidelines have different pros and cons (see related story), which may have influenced the survey results.

Your E/M revenue depends on getting full payment for the work your providers did, and that means choosing defensible code levels based on the right E/M guidelines. The choice between the 1995 and 1997 E/M guidelines from CPT must be made with lots of factors in mind, practice managers and coding pros say.

You're just weeks away from being able to furnish and bill Medicare's new annual wellness visit (AWV). With the Jan. 1 start date looming, CMS has clarified several lingering issues about the new service that will help your coding and billing efforts. The new information comes from Transmittal 2109, released Dec. 3, and from a CMS official's emailed responses to inquiries by Part B News.

Your budget meetings may soon be free of doomsday projections showing what it'd be like to practice medicine with devastating Medicare cuts in 2011. Democratic and Republican leaders in the Senate agreed to a 12-month Medicare payment fix bill, which is full of extra goodies to maintain current reimbursement rates at your practice. Example: It provides $200 million needed to reprocess claims paid earlier this year at updated fee schedule rates (PBN 9/27/10).

Participation in the Physician Quality Reporting Initiative (PQRI) in 2009 turned out to be a painful choice for many of your peers. Overall, one out of every five PQRI codes submitted to CMS on physician claims was used in error. In this special report, practices show you can easily earn quality bonuses by utilizing a registry.