January 5, 2024 | By Victoria Moll, CPC, COC, CPMA, CRC, CPFC, CPRC, AAPC Approved Instructor, Fellow CEO, Contempo Coding The strategic use of Modifier 25, particularly when dealing with same-day procedures within global periods, is essential. Throughout my career, I’ve seen multiple colleagues working on claim edits and would cheerfully apply whatever modifier the…
December 29, 2023 | By Laidy Diana Martinez CPC, CPB, CPMA, CGSC, CGIC, CASCC January 2024 Marks the Arrival of G2211: A Three-Year Wait Ends but raises questions of simplicity versus complexity. Though G2211 isn’t a new concept, it has been on hold due to congressional decisions for the past three years. Finally, in January…
December 15, 2023 | By Stephanie Allard, CPC, CEMA, RHIT One area that keeps coming up in my conversations and education sessions is the definition and understanding, or misunderstanding, of the concept of a “problem addressed” during an encounter and how that is applied to E/M services. As treating practitioners document and as we…
October 9, 2020 | Aimee L. Wilcox, CPMA, CCS-P, CST, MA, MT, Director of Content, innoviHealth If you are an active coder or auditor, you are likely keenly aware of the abundant changes to healthcare laws, regulations, policies, and guidelines surrounding HIPAA, coding, reimbursement, and especially to the integration and rapid expansion of telemedicine…
November 24, 2023 | By Brenda Edwards, CPC, CDEO, CPB, CPC-I, CEMC, CRC, CMRS, CMCS If you are like me and have been coding for over half of your life, we have seen many changes. I remember the 1980s when all we had were the code books without the illustrations or descriptive additions that…
November 10, 2023 | By Toni Elhoms, CCS, CPC, CPMA, CRC On countless occasions, I have heard physicians and healthcare providers balk at the notion of learning how to level their E/M services based on medical-decision-making (MDM), and some will even go as far as to say things like “I don’t have time…
November 1, 2023 | By Shannon O. DeConda We conducted a comprehensive survey to gain a better understanding of the ongoing debate in the industry about whether the E/M level of services is increasing or decreasing with the latest guidelines implemented in 2021. While we acknowledge that the survey isn’t scientifically conclusive, we urge organizations…
April 2, 2021 | By J. Paul Spencer, CPC, COC We now collectively find ourselves one calendar quarter into the new frontier of 2021 outpatient E/M services. Since January 1, I have fielded many questions from my professional contacts regarding how best to look at the newly-engineered medical decision making (MDM) component. As might…
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…
Have you seen the new free NAMAS E&M Mind Map download? The idea behind the Mind Map is that sometimes it’s easier to process and understand things through visual downloads. We envision this as being something that you, as an auditor or coder, may find value in, but also for educating providers, it’s easy to…