For example, the article mentions the place of service guidelines for doctors who provide telehealth services to patients who are not at a designated distant site.
CMS also directed providers to designate a place of service when billing, initially asking them to enter a specific code.
That is, CMS told doctors to append telehealth place of service (POS) 02 to their claims. Doing so triggered a 30% pay cut: Claims with POS 02 were reimbursed at 70%, one doctor said. The article notes that the problem was solved when CMS changed its guidance and instructed practices to select the place of service code based on the location the face-to-face visit would have occurred. However, practices that didn’t get the update may have resigned themselves to lower payments.
We were slightly off in our assumptions. By our count CMS has issued 10 changes to its telehealth and telemedicine policies since we scheduled the webinar on March 25.
Fortunately, the webinar will be presented by Betsy Nicoletti, CPC, president of Medical Practice Consulting in Northampton, Mass. She followed the twists and turns of CMS’ guidance, its updates to the guidance and its revisions to the updates to the guidance and captured them all in her presentation. Here’s a list of topics she had to track:
- Documentation for office E/M services.
- Coverage of telephone E/M encounters.
- Definition of communications-based services.
- New designated telehealth codes.
- HIPAA compliance.
- Modifier 95.
- Place of service codes.
- Direct supervision guidelines.
- Modifier CS.
- Revised information for modifier CS.
Each registration includes on-demand access to the slides and recording. 1 AAPC CEU is available for people who listen to the recording and pass a quiz.