As Medicare Advantage makes strides to becoming the new norm, organizations need to establish new processes, educate staff, and advocate for patients. Learn how your organization can keep pace with change before it’s too late to catch up.
While the calendar year 2020 OPPS proposed rule is shorter than in prior years (819 pages for the display version), the proposed policies therein pack a punch and may be thought of as a new day dawning for the future of hospital services.
CMS’ Hospital Outpatient Payment (HOP) panel made numerous recommendations at its annual meeting August 19 for the agency to consider ahead of the release of the 2020 OPPS final rule—with the panel and other stakeholders urging CMS to be more transparent with its responses and release of data.
Behavioral health is a highly specialized area of coding that many coders and billers are unfamiliar with. There are hundreds of ICD-10-CM codes for mental disorders with unique characters to specify symptoms and complications.
Even if a hospital is not a teaching hospital, it may have services that require National Clinical Trial (NCT) reporting. It is logical for revenue integrity leadership to own this issue, but an explanation of the requirements for NCT reporting should be shared with all staff within the revenue cycle so there is a better appreciation of the fact that clinical trial billing rules apply more broadly than merely just to research or clinical trial studies.
CMS released the 2020 OPPS proposed rule July 29, proposing to refine previous policies related to price transparency and the 2-midnight rule, while also asking for comments on how to potentially undo its policy that reduced payments for drugs purchased under the 340B drug discount program by nearly 30%.
