August 7, 2020 | By By Rachel Rose, JD, MBA The Health Information Portability and Accountability Act, Pub. L. 104-191 (Aug. 1996) (“HIPAA”) is often times misapplied. Take the COVID-19 pandemic for example. Despite the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) and the Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”) reiterating the exceptions present…
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July 31, 2020 | By Brenda Edwards, CPC, CDEO, CPB, CPC-I, CEMC, CRC, CMRS, CMCS The workplace is a diverse collection of individual people who are all working towards one goal – making the company successful. Personalities can make this challenging; generational differences brought into the equation can make this even more difficult. When…
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July 24, 2020 | By Sean Weiss, CHC, CEMA, CMCO, CPMA, CPC-P, CMPE, CPC Here we are, nearly at the end of July 2020 and we are neck deep in the process of trying to determine the true impact of the 2021 Evaluation and Management (E&M) Services changes. Here’s the deal from my perspective:…
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July 23, 2020 | By Sean Weiss, CHC, CEMA, CMCO, CPMA, CPC-P, CMPE, CPC As you all know the Public Health Emergency (PHE) is due to expire on Saturday the 25th of July unless the Secretary of HHS issues a declaration extending the PHE under what is referred to as the Public Health Services…
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July 17, 2020 | By Pam Vanderbilt, CPC, CPMA, CPPM, CPC-I, CEMC, CEMA, CEMA-O By now everyone has heard that we will no longer have to score history and exam components to determine an E&M code level for the office/outpatient CPT codes 99202-99215, beginning January 1, 2021. Instead, we will use new methods for…
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July 10, 2020 | By Paul Spencer, CPC, COC Regular readers of this unique space in the auditing universe have more than likely begun to prepare for 2021 outpatient E/M changes. These planned adaptations have focused mainly on documentation regarding medical decision making, as well as the total time element that is fundamental…
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July 3, 2020 | By Stephanie Allard, CPC, CEMA, RHIT As we move towards implementing the 2021 E/M changes, we need to evaluate areas of bad habits within E/M encounter documentation. I have noticed in my current reviews that many providers are in the habit of documenting the same exact amount of…
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June 26, 2020 | By Holly Cassano, CPC, CRC As we move through the COVID-19 pandemic, many of us in health care are finding that many opinions and much guidance exists on the topic of telehealth/telemedicine, from many various sources. At the beginning of the COVID-19 public health emergency, the rules literally seemed to change…
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June 23, 2020 | By Grant Huang, CPC, CPMA One of the more challenging aspects of coding and auditing for OB/GYN providers revolves around the global obstetrical package, which bundles all services relating to pregnancy and delivery into a single global code, depending on the manner of delivery. What is part of…
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June 19, 2020 | By Grant Huang, CPC, CPMA The hype surrounding next year’s implementation of new guidelines for documenting and coding Evaluation & Management (E&M) services has revolved around the virtual elimination of the history and physical exam as key components of code selection. But some of the lesser-known changes involving…
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