January 15, 2021 | By Stephanie Allard, CPC, CEMA, RHIT CMS defines critical care as “the direct delivery by a physician(s) of medical care for a critically ill or injured patient. The care of such patients involves decision making of high complexity to assess, manipulate, and support central nervous system failure, circulatory failure, shock-like…
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January 7, 2021 | By Grant Huang, CPC, CPMA The 2021 Physician Fee Schedule (PFS) had included the largest one-year reduction to the Medicare conversion factor (CF) in more than 20 years, but it won’t actually take effect because the CF is being increased as a result of provisions in the recently passed stimulus legislation.…
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January 8, 2021 | By David Glaser In early December, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) issued new rules that dramatically revise the Physician Self-Referral Law, commonly called the “Stark law” after Pete Stark, the Congressman credited with introducing it. While many of the changes loosen the law’s restrictions, focused particularly on…
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January 1, 2021 | By Shannon DeConda, CPC, CEMC, CEMA, CPMA, CRTT While conducting a 2021 E&M Physician Training event for a client, like right in the middle of the session, I had an epiphany. Now maybe you have already had it- but I thought- WOW- we have made the full circle right back around…
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December 25, 2020 | By By Grant Huang, CPC, CPMA The New Year is nearly upon us and with it, implementation of the much-talked-about 2021 E/M guidelines for office/outpatient codes 99202-99215. These guidelines include completely revamping how time works for selecting code levels, which in turn has resulted in brand new rules for prolonged…
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