CMS released the 2017 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule proposed rule yesterday, with policies that look to expand an Innovation Center program, revise payment for care management services, and collect data regarding global period payments.
CMS proposes aligning its conditional packaging modifiers and deleting a much-maligned modifier for separately payable laboratory tests in the 2017 OPPS proposed rule, released July 6.
CMS issued a final rule last week to revamp the way it pays for tests under the Clinical Laboratory Fee Schedule (CLFS), though the agency has pushed the start date back a year and worked to ease administrative burden based on public comments.
ICD-10 implementation was always expected to result in a drop in coding productivity and accuracy, but the impact has been much lower than anticipated, according to a recent white paper from the AHIMA Foundation.
In the July quarterly OPPS update, CMS mentions billing physical and occupational therapy and speech-language pathology services provided in support of or adjunctive to comprehensive APC services under revenue code 0940 rather than the NUBC-defined revenue codes. This article helps make sense of the situation.
If CMS’ late April release of a change request requiring reporting of the previously optional modifier -JW (drug amount discarded/not administered to any patient) by July 1 seemed too sudden, the good news is many other providers—and the agency—agreed.
CMS' coding modifiers are not always used to report clinical components of a service. Sometimes they can be used in order to provide information about how a service relates to Medicare coverage policies.
As healthcare providers increasingly accept financial risk associated with patient management due to the transition from fee-for-service to risk-/value-based reimbursement, the traditional model of healthcare reimbursement has been flipped upside down.
The April 2016 I/OCE update brought a host of code and status indicator changes, as well as corrections to CMS' large January update that instituted policies and codes from the 2016 OPPS final rule.
CMS is expected next week to discuss potential changes to 2-midnight rule audits by Quality Improvement Organizations after quietly suspending the reviews in early May.
