On April 1, 2014, President Barack Obama passed the legislation, Protecting Access to Medicare Act of 2014 that enacts a 13-month temporary patch for the sustainable growth rate (SGR) formula and...
COPD Coding Precautions
Assigning the ICD-9-CM Diagnosis Code 496 is not as simple as it looks. ICD-09-CM code 496 indicates chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or COPD which is defined as chronic airway obstruction, not...
ACOG Says Certain Medicare Contractors are Denying G0101 Claims
The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) reports that some Medicare contractors are refusing to provide payment for routine pelvic and breast examinations when they are...
An Overview of Anesthesia Coding Challenges
Anesthesiology medical billing is not based on a fee-for-service payment like other medical specialties. Reimbursement for anesthesiologists depends on the base unit (how complicated the procedure...
Increased Administrative Costs Shutting Down Physician Private Practices
A recent report CNNMoney report states that physicians in the U.S. have started selling their private practices to big hospitals because of rising business costs and falling reimbursements from...
What is HEDIS Coding?
The Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set (HEDIS) is set of norms employed by most of the healthcare plans in the US for measuring performance in relation to service and care. HEDIS was...
Medicare Payment Reductions to Affect Doctors and Beneficiaries
Medicare beneficiaries, doctors and other healthcare providers are in for quite a tough time thanks to rising healthcare costs not coinciding with a proportionate increase in income for the latter....
Proper Appointment Scheduling Can Help Lower Patient Wait Time
According to healthcare experts, making relevant changes in scheduling and managing patient workflow can minimize the average patient wait time for a new appointment from eleven weeks to two weeks....
Health Exchange Deadline for States Extended
The deadline for setting up a state-based health insurance exchange has been extended until December 14. Announcing this, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said that this was...