A report by CMS's Office of the Actuary details more than $500 billion in savings/cuts found in the House health reform bill, which passed the House on Nov. 7. The Washington Post summarizes the actuary's findings in an article with the headline "Report: Bill would reduce senior care" and subhead "Medicare cuts approved by House may affect access to providers."

Your peers earned an average bonus of $1,000 per provider for participation in the Physician Quality Reporting Initiative (PQRI) in 2008, CMS announced. PQRI bonuses, equaling 1.5% of an individual provider's Medicare charges, have been arriving at physician practices and bank accounts over the last couple weeks. More than 153,600 providers participated in PQRI, CMS says, but 55.3% of those reporting successfully earned a bonus -- which is better than the previous reporting year.

Former Part B News reporter Christopher Weaver, along with his colleague Kate Steadman, received praise from The New York Times columnist David Brooks for work on an article titled "Congress often blocks Medicare changes that would cut costs." Brooks cited the article from the Kaiser Health News division when pointing out Medicare has often tried pilot programs to improve care, reduce costs and make the program more efficient, but "Congress rejected them because doctors or hospitals or somebody else lobbied against them." For example, Congress has yet to enact a bundling demo project regarding heart surgeries that started in the 1990s.

Yes, there was some health care reform news over the weekend. The House passed its health bill by a slim 220-215 vote.

I wrote about the elimination of consultation codes in this week's issue and wanted to correct a point I made toward the end of the article. The new modifier mentioned in the article -- which wasn't fully detailed in the final 2010 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule -- will distinguish the admitting physician. The admitting physician, who's coordinating the patient's care, appends the modifier to the initial care code billed for the service. After Jan. 1, specialists seeing inpatients will bill an initial care code instead of an inpatient consult code.