While many providers are still digesting the IPPS Final Rule, muddling through how the OPPS Proposed Rule might impact their bottom line, and kicking rocks because the 2-midnight rule was not chucked, President Obama signed a bill into law on August 6, 2015—and it’s one providers should note. Unanimously approved by both the House and Senate earlier this year, the Notice of Observation Treatment and Implication for Care Eligibility Act, otherwise called the NOTICE Act, will not take effect until August 2016, but will certainly add one more layer to the administrative burden associated with outpatient observation services when it does.
Finding themselves at the center of a tumultuous, dynamic healthcare environment, physicians are becoming increasingly frustrated and anxious, frequently questioning their career choice. Preparation to be a lifelong healthcare provider inadequately prepares clinicians for the emerging value-based healthcare world to which they are being subjected. Physicians believe that they have little control over or input into the metrics that are rapidly determining their fates with healthcare organizations, third-party payers, and inevitably patients themselves.
While some HIM professionals may feel a sense of relief knowing RAC audits are on hold for the remainder of 2015, that should not deter workforce members from keeping track of denials and appeals and defending code assignments.
