Over the last month, the website Keep the Codes popped up to help you and your peers lobby HHS and Congress over keeping consultation billing. The site is well organized (by the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists) with form letters and a petition (with more than 1,100 signatures) to make your opinions on consults well known. But the Keep the Codes cause is likely too little, too late.
For example, a simple consult amendment offered up by the honorable Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) failed to gain traction during health care reform deliberations and has gone nowhere. Several of your peers and medical societies pleaded with CMS to not implement or at least delay the elimination of consults because of the strong likelihood of mass billing confusion in 2010, but CMS went ahead with the policy anyway.
However, according to the latest unscientific Part B News online poll -- about 17% of your peers favor the policy. A whooping 55% think it's a bad policy.
You may want to go over to Keep the Codes if you're among those still against the consult change. Over the next few days CMS could retroactively keep consults or delay the implementation for a couple months. You never know, right?
Editor's note: Get the consultation billing guidance you need with DecisionHealth's Consultation Code Crosswalk Quick Cards. This easy-to-use crosswalk will help you ensure proper reimbursement for consult services rendered in 2010.