CMS has made good on its promise to publish a list of all providers who have received a revalidation letter. The first wave of revalidations was sent out in late September, and consisted of 89,000 providers nationwide. This most recent list includes 105,053 providers, and was uploaded Nov. 17 on the CMS website.

You’ve barely had time to process the new material in the 2012 Physician Fee Schedule final rule, but some of your peers are already blasting CMS for making annual wellness visits (AWVs) tougher to bill. The new component to the AWV is called the health risk assessment (HRA). Problem is, the AWV was already confusing to patients because it’s too restricting, includes no physical exam and is different from what patients and providers are used to as far as a “physical,” one angry caller told CMS during the agency’s latest open door call Nov. 7.

Your Medicare payments will fall by 27.4% in 2012, under a conversion factor of $24.6712, which is slightly less than the 29.5% cut projected by CMS earlier under the sustainable growth rate (SGR) formula. The difference is due to Medicare costs growing slightly slower than expected, the agency says. Of course, this 27.4% cut isn’t the final word, because Congress has always stepped in at the last minute to avert SGR cuts.

You now have official answers from CMS on some of the trickiest meaningful use questions around, including just how much clinical data you need to record and how to record measures for providers who use electronic health records (EHRs) in multiple locations. The answers, some complete, some barely helpful, are now on CMS’s frequently asked questions (FAQ) page at https://questions.cms.hhs.gov/. Here’s a rundown on the latest ones for meaningful use.

A total of around 89,000 providers have been sent revalidation notices so far, top CMS officials said in an open door call this afternoon (Oct. 27). That makes up about 6% of the 1.5 million providers who are impacted by the latest revalidation initiative. Those 89,000 letters were mailed by Medicare contractors in the last half of September, said Mark Majestic, a CMS official.