You will not be required to enter every CPT code for advanced imaging that you bill by July 2011, but you are encouraged to start as soon as possible to get accredited and update your Medicare enrollment, CMS says. You have until Jan. 1, 2012 to get this done, but can begin the process in July 2011, a CMS official writes in an email to Part B News.

You and your peers are seeing a lot of patient interest in Medicare’s new annual wellness visit (AWV). To help shoulder the load, CMS policy allows you to use non-physician practitioners (NPPs) and, even lower-level licensed medical professionals unable to enroll in Medicare to perform AWVs.

You face relatively few changes from the latest round of Correct Coding Initiative (CCI) edits, version 17.1, which took effect April 1. Version 17.1 contains a total of 12,192 changes, less than half of the 29,600 changes from version 17.0 (PBN 12/16/10).

Your practice has a unique, long established way of getting things done. The thought of adding an electronic health records (EHR) system to the mix may seem daunting. But experts who talked to Part B News are confident that after the initial whirlwind of implementation, your practice will emerge to operate more efficiently.

This chart examines how primary care practices fare against specialists when billing the biggest, most common surgical procedures furnished in the office and outpatient hospital settings (place of service codes 11 and 22 respectively). Denial rates are clearly higher for primary care than for specialists, on a code-by-code basis. The percentages above the bars indicate the denial rate for each code in a given year; all denial rates are an average that reflects data from multiple specialties, e.g. “primary care” is an average of family practice, general practice, internal medicine, geriatrics and OB/GYN.

This week’s question is answered by Regan Bode, CPC, CPC-H, CPMA, CEMC, ACS-EM, content manager for DecisionHealth and consultant for DecisionHealth Professional Services.