Home | News & Analysis
Part B News
04/01/2024
Much discussion of artificial intelligence (AI) in health care focuses on the readiness, or lack thereof, of clinical applications. But even if you’re using only the most basic AI tools, such as scribing applications, you still need to be careful about data security, integrity and privacy — and about the contract terms that allow the vendor to use your data.
04/01/2024
Get ready for another update to your local coverage determination (LCD) for facet joint interventions. Medicare administrative contractors (MAC) are teaming up again to clarify their uniform LCD for facet joint nerve blocks (64490-64491 and 64493-64494) and radiofrequency ablation (RFA) (64633-64636).
04/01/2024
For the second year running, providers turned to modifier 59 (Distinct procedural service) most often when performing a lesion-destruction service, and denials held steady for codes 17003 and 17000. But keep an eye on a duo of lab codes: the denial rates on 87798 and 87481 shot up significantly in 2022.
03/25/2024
The stopgap 2024 Consolidated Appropriations Act (CAA) upped the Part B conversion factor, but delivered what many health care industry groups consider insufficient relief to physicians suffering from Medicare cuts.
03/25/2024
The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced in December a significant settlement with Lafourche Medical Group, marking the first resolution of an investigation into a phishing cyberattack under HIPAA. Understand key compliance strategies with the following question-and-answer session with Omer Kaan Aslim, cybersecurity specialist at cybersecurity firm Lake Ridge, who shares compliance tips related to this breach.
03/25/2024
Check your payments for telehealth services reported with place of service 10 (Telehealth provided in patient’s home) after Jan. 1, 2024. If your Medicare administrative contractor (MAC) paid the facility rate that’s a big mistake. Your MAC should pay the non-facility rate when the patient is at home during a telehealth service.
03/25/2024
Question: We have three follow-up questions about the new local coverage determination (LCD) for trigger point injections (20552-20553) that will take effect on April 1.
03/25/2024
Medicare’s chronic and complex chronic care management (CCM) codes continued their upward climb in 2022, and the power users among specialties remained mostly constant.
03/18/2024
Fallout from the Change Healthcare hack continues. Experts advise that even if you’re not actively caught up in it, you should take steps to ensure that if your practice experiences downhill effects — whether in cybersecurity, data security or business resiliency — the danger to your practice will be reduced.
03/18/2024
Watch out for edits to a range of new codes that debuted Jan. 1 in the upcoming updates to the National Correct Coding Initiative (NCCI) files. Your practice could see unexpected denials when the edits go into effect April 1.

Login

User Name:
Password:
Welcome to the new Part B News Online. If you are a returning user having trouble logging in, please click here.
Back to top