Category: Blog

Final Physician Payment Rule Keeps EM Code Changes

Medicare Remote Patient Monitoring: CMS Finalizes New Code and General Supervision

CMS just released the 2020 final rule with changes to remote patient monitoring (RPM), officially titled “Chronic Care Remote Physiologic Monitoring,” reimbursed under the Medicare program, as part of the Physician Fee Schedule changes. The changes, proposed earlier this year, have been hotly-anticipated by digital health companies hoping to see more clarity and flexibility for RPM services. CMS […]
Adjusting Medicaid Payments for Social Determinants

Adjusting Medicaid Payments for Social Determinants to Boost Care

Using a per-person adjustment for Medicaid payments to hospitals would address social determinants of health and help hospitals fund more comprehensive care, experts say. Adjusting Medicaid payments for social determinants of health would help address the broader social needs of children and cost restraints at safety-net hospitals, according to researchers from the Northwestern University Feinberg School of […]
Outpatient Proposals

2020 Outpatient Proposals: 5 Rules You Should Know From CMS

Hospital and health system executives should monitor these proposals for provisions that will affect their organizations’ operations. The 2020 annual rule cycle has been active for CMS. Several proposals in the outpatient prospective payment system (OPPS) proposed rule is controversial, although there is at least one provider-friendly change. Here’s a roundup of five regulatory rules […]
What Patients Want During Online Appointment Scheduling

What Patients Want During Online Appointment Scheduling? To Not Talk To Anyone

Patients prefer online scheduling to talking on the phone, a new report shows. Patients would rather make their healthcare appointments online without speaking to anyone, a new report reveals. However, the report doesn’t address how such a model might impact revenue cycles that want to do pre-service insurance verification and collections. The report, from the […]
Professional Fee Revenue Cycle for Better ED Bottom Lines

7 Best Practices to Improve Professional Fee Revenue Cycle for Better ED Bottom Lines

Most healthcare organizations partner with physician services groups for niche coverage. While outsourced medical services are available across all specialties, common areas for external physician support include anesthesia, radiology, wound care, and emergency medicine. However, when outsourced physician services are used, challenges to ensure accurate reimbursement for both components of care—the hospital portion and the […]
EM coding changes

E/M coding changes

A “bold proposal” to reduce the documentation burden on physicians was released as part of CMS’s 2019 proposed Medicare Physician Fee Schedule (PFS). This seemed to have begun as an effort to listen to stakeholders and address the problems of out-of-date guidelines, cloning, EHR misuse, and problems that have evolved since the inception of the […]
How Artificial Intelligence is Changing Healthcare

How Artificial Intelligence is Changing Healthcare

Among the many examples of Artificial Intelligence, AI in healthcare is clearly one of the leaders. AI is already reshaping medicine in many ways, and its influence will only increase in the years ahead. To shed light on this major shift, I spoke with Dr. Krishnan Nandabalan, founder and CEO of InveniAI, an AI healthcare company based in Connecticut. We […]