Archive for August 2017
CMS Revamps Medicare Audit Strategy
Good news for some healthcare providers and not so good news for others. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid has announced changes to its Medicare audit strategy in an effort to root out fraud and abuse. The new process is based on a pilot program that CMS introduced in 2014 in which the agency combined…
Read MoreHave Physicians Embraced the Use of End-of-Life Billing Codes?
It’s been about a year since the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) approved payment for voluntary end-of-life counseling as part of its 2016 Medicare physician fee schedule. A recent article in Modern Healthcare suggests that many physicians are using the codes to have important end-of-life planning conversations with patients. The codes (99497 and…
Read MoreProposed Opioid Bill Ensures Patient Privacy While Helping MDs Make Rx Decisions
An estimated one-in-three Americans had a prescription for opioids in 2015 and that number continues to grow. With that growth has come a startling increase in the number of overdose deaths. The National Center for Health Statistics reported that overdose deaths hit a record 19.9 per 100,000 population in the third quarter of 2016, up…
Read MoreOIG Plans to Focus on Medicare Part B Payments for Telemedicine
The Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General, (HHS OIG) recently announced a new project designed to review Medicare Part B payments for telemedicine services. It’s part of the OIG’s Work Plan initiatives released last November and updated monthly. Among the June/July updates, the agency noted it will be looking to see…
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