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Benchmark of the Week
02/16/2026
CMS’ Open Payments website has undergone a makeover, and its latest (2024) numbers for payments to physicians from “applicable manufacturers or applicable GPOs” (including drug and device manufacturers) are available there. More money changed hands in 2024 than in 2018, the earliest year for which numbers are publicly available. But it may be less than you expected.
02/09/2026
A physician can serve as an assistant at surgery, but Medicare Part B claims data show that a qualified health care professional (QHP) is most likely to answer the call when the primary surgeon needs an extra pair of hands that are guided by advanced clinical training.
02/02/2026
In the four years since prolonged services code G2212 made its debut in 2021, practices have ramped up their use of the 15-minute add-on code, with claims surging 88% between 2021 and 2024.
01/26/2026
Utilization of the e-visit codes established before the pandemic in 2020, represented by 99421-99423 (Online E/M for physicians) and 98970-98972 (Online assessment and management [A/M] for non-physician qualified health professionals), suffered in the aftermath of the public health emergency.
01/19/2026
Whether practices performed an organ- or disease-oriented lab panel with a simplified or more complex laboratory test, the comprehensive metabolic panel (80053) dominated lab panels performed in place of service 11 (Office) for the years 2020 to 2024.
01/12/2026
Practices upped their annual wellness visit (AWV) reporting and cleared a new high in reimbursement for subsequent AWV code G0439 in 2024, topping $1.1 billion in payments.
01/05/2026
Concierge care, coding updates and telehealth were among the topics of greatest interest to you and your peers in 2025. A review of traffic data for partbnews.com, the Part B News website, revealed the articles and blog posts that received the highest number of views this year.
12/22/2025
The place of service (POS) where your providers tend to perform E/M services, including office visits and the care management suite of codes, will significantly influence your reimbursement in 2026. After CMS charted a course that favors non-facility sites of care, the E/M fee picture is coming into focus.
12/15/2025
Utilization of the operation-related modifiers 24 (Unrelated evaluation and management service by the same physician during a postoperative period) and 57 (Decision for surgery) has held relatively stable in recent years, and 2024 was no exception.
12/08/2025
Prior authorization requests for eight types of services performed in the hospital outpatient setting took a great leap forward in fiscal year (FY) 2024. But there’s good news: While requests nearly doubled from FY2023 to FY2024, denials did not keep pace.

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