Don't start panicking yet, but it turns out that the electronic health record (EHR) incentive money everyone's been talking about could go right out the door. That's right, the up to $44,000 in per-provider subsidies could be eliminated by the Congressional "supercommittee," a bipartisan group of 12 lawmakers formed by the Budget Control Act of 2011 -- aka the debt ceiling law - passed Aug. 2 after much political wrangling. Whether the supercommittee comes up with a bill or not, this means your EHR incentive money could be reduced or even eliminated as a result of deficit cutting.

That’s right. The much anticipated finalized e-prescribing (e-Rx) rule can be expected as early as Friday and “may have additional hardship exemptions,” CMS officials announced on an Aug. 29 nationwide provider conference call for Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS) and e-Rx call.

You can expect to see overpayment demands from CMS between now and November for Part B claims processed after April 1, 2011, the agency says. On April 1, CMS implemented a change request (CR 7026) that allowed its Common Working File to accept both Medicare as secondary payer (MSP) data and non-MSP data in claims adjustment lines. In English: Any patient who hasn't met the Medicare deductible, but has Medicare as the secondary payer, was issued coverage and had services paid as if the deductible were met, for claims processed anytime after April 1, 2011, CMS says.

CMS wants you and your peers to sign up for its new bundled payment initiative aimed at streamlining patient care during and after inpatient hospital stays while reducing Medicare costs, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced in a conference call Aug. 23. The Bundled Payments for Care Improvement pilot program, set to launch in 2012, is the attempt to save money prompted by the health care reform law. It encourages providers to administer quality care by voluntarily participating in one of four bundled payment models.

The next time you get a request for records from your carrier or recovery audit contractor (RAC), you would be able to send it electronically under a new CMS pilot program. The Electronic Submission of Medical Documentation (esMD) lets you send any requested record as a PDF document, which typically means you scan or convert the required documents into PDFs. This could reduce the time it takes to meet a records request, although you will probably need to go through your claims clearinghouse to submit information via esMD.