You can bill Medicare for alcohol and substance abuse intervention services when patients demonstrate symptoms of related illness or injury and your providers do a thorough job documenting the encounters. A July 6 educational article from CMS reminds you about these services, which are technically termed "structured assessment and brief intervention" (SBIRT). They allow your physicians and most non-physician practitioners (NPPs) to bill for face-to-face time spent with patients suffering illness or injury due to alcohol or non-tobacco substance abuse.

When you're having payment problems with a Blues plan, you may have an additional weapon in your arsenal to challenge the plan. Most Blues plans signed on to a national agreement to settle class action litigation regarding their activities. If their current activity violates those agreements, you have the right to file a complaint with a third party to help you out.

Watch for letters questioning your enrollment status from your carrier. A medical association reports multiple physicians have received notices that their enrollment isn't valid, despite these physicians appearing on CMS's ordering/referring master list (PBN 7/12/10).

Two-thirds of your peers believe they've positioned their practices to earn electronic health record (EHR) program incentives within the next two years, according to a Part B News reader survey. However, the incentive amount - up to $44,000 per physician from the Medicare program - won't cover implementation costs incurred by the practice, readers say. Just 22% of respondents believe the bonus payments will fully compensate the physicians for participation in the program (PBN 7/12/10).

People outside of the healthcare sector would be surprised—and probably unnerved—to learn how many newly discharged hospital patients get lost in the transition back to the real world and their primary care physicians.

Medical staff and hospital leaders are well aware that physician burnout can potentially put patients at risk for adverse events. What they might not be aware of is that organizational culture and the way physician wellness activities are designed may be contributing to physician burnout.

In the tiny subspecialty of gynecologic oncologists, the Society of Gynecologic Oncologists (SGO) conducts an extensive survey of its 1,100 practitioners every five years. This isn’t your quick how-are-things-going type poll—the survey could take an hour for participants to complete, the society leaders say.

Ever heard of a drive-by heart attack? Bill Atkinson has. Even if he’s only joking, Atkinson says Raleigh, NC–based WakeMed Health & Hospitals, where he is president and CEO, is keeping that image in mind as it develops its outpatient strategy for the coming decade.