You and your patients got some good news from the new health reform law when it comes to dealing with health plans - it will be easier for you to appeal adverse decisions from health plans and new appeal rights will be afforded.

You and your peers have flooded CMS with questions on how to demonstrate meaningful use of electronic health records (EHR) systems in order to score up to $44,000 per provider in federal incentives. The agency has compiled a list of the 10 most common questions "that don't have immediately obvious answers," according to one official. Here's a partial rundown.

Your peers across the country took measures large and small to tighten their belts and boost efficiency in the face of this year's pay-fix saga and the extended debate and passage of health reform. However, many subscribers tell Part B News they won't touch the nuclear option of refusing to see new Medicare patients.

Can you give me billing guidelines for how to bill polysomnography code 95810 ($766.22) when the service is done in the hospital? Is it automatically a global code?

This chart compares nine specialties with some of the highest Medicare utilization, to see how their billing breaks down by code category. The data lets you see at a glance where a specialty's utilization comes from, whether it's E/M services (99201-99499), imaging and radiology (70000-79999), lab tests (80000-89999), medicine and therapy (90281-98962) or surgery and anesthesia (00100-69990). All statistics are based on CMS claims data from 2008, the latest available.

The prize of $44,000 per physician for meeting meaningful use via Medicare's Electronic Health Record (EHR) incentive program is more accessible than you might think. Physicians who can't meet any clinical quality measures - because none are relevant to their practices - are still eligible for the full EHR bonus, assuming they meet all other requirements and get started by the cutoff date of Oct. 1, 2012.

CMS is directing your Medicare Administrative Contractor to add seven remittance advice remark codes (RARC) to its list of codes detailing payment adjustments, appeal rights and other claims information.

You have another option to earn a bonus through CMS's Physician Quality Reporting Initiative (PQRI) in 2011, but be prepared to act fast if you're interested. CMS is proposing to open its group reporting option to physician practices with less than 200 providers next year, but will limit the number of groups that can participate in the group reporting option for 2011.

CMS is planning to offer your practice an extra bonus payment next year through another quality initiative. Incentives will equal 0.5% of your Medicare charges from 2011 through 2014 - yielding anywhere from an extra couple hundred to thousands of dollars per provider each year.

Take extra caution when reviewing a patient's new health coverage information when it doesn't look familiar - instances of patients buying fake health insurance are on the rise, sticking your patients and potentially your practice with big bills that will be difficult or impossible to collect.