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Pre-screen patients, isolate if needed when infection threat rises

02/16/2015

Take simple precautions to make sure your patients don’t get sicker when a patient presenting special infection risks comes in for treatment.

Fight your way through murky rules to get paid for physician-led home services

02/16/2015

by: Richard Scott

Don’t let confusion surrounding Medicare’s abbreviated rules for providing home services — and the hefty price tag of approximately $40.5 million in denied claims — stop you from delivering needed services to high-risk patients.

Homebound criteria

02/16/2015

Though regulations for what constitutes a patient who needs a physician home visit can be vague, providers can look to these rules for home health homebound status for guidance.

7 small steps — including wellness visits, registries — with big P4P rewards

02/16/2015

by: Roy Edroso

http://pbn.decisionhealth.com/Articles/Detail.aspx?id=519314Use easy lay-ups such as annual wellness visits (AWVs) and clinical documentation improvement as a springboard to meet for pay-for-performance models that HHS says are coming soon.

Look to patient status, medical necessity to avoid denials of home service codes

02/16/2015

by: Richard Scott

Home service codes 99341-99350 see an average denial rate of approximately 11%, with denied dollar amounts north of $40 million annually, according to an analysis of 2013 Medicare data, the latest available.

EHR update: Reporting period may be cut to 90 days, 2017 goal for interoperability

02/09/2015

Practices should take note of two developments in meaningful use that could affect how they use their electronic health records (EHRs).

Protect your practice with policies for providers who use their own devices

02/09/2015

by: Scott Kraft

Have a policy that helps your practice deal with this common security breach that your providers may be committing.

Document key elements during initial contact with patient to get paid for TCM services

02/09/2015

About the initial point of contact with the patient when using the transitional care management (TCM) codes 99495 and 99496 -- Is documentation of the details of the call required to bill TCM?

Focus staff on care management to get ahead of changing payment mechanisms

02/09/2015

by: Richard Scott

Determine whether to hire an embedded care manager to work within your practice or assign the job tasks to existing staff to capture reimbursement dollars that hinge on value- and quality-based care measures.

Key to critical care is in documentation of condition, not patient location

02/09/2015

by: Scott Kraft

Don’t automatically bill for a critical care service because the patient is being seen in an intensive care unit or emergency department. While those are the more likely locations for critical care, the service can be billed in any place of service, including the physician’s office.

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