HAP Radiology Billing and Coding Blog

By now everyone involved in billing Medicare for physician services should be aware of the new Quality Payment Program (QPP) that will be in effect for payments in 2019 based on data submitted in 2017.  The proposed rules for the new system were outlined in our recent article Medicare Quality Reporting Rules are Changing.  The final regulations that will govern the new system were recently issued, and radiology practices will benefit from preparing as early as possible to capture the data they will need to report under the new system.  ­

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Looking for our latest article on the 2018 updates?  Click here.

Congress has passed several Acts related to the Medicare payment system over recent years, the provisions of which will begin to take effect in 2017. These changes are embodied in the annual Medicare Physician Fee Schedule Final Rule for 2017 (MPFS) and the Hospital Outpatient Prospective Payment System Final Rule for 2017 (HOPPS).  In their initial review of the MPFS, the American College of Radiology (ACR) indicated that it “is pleased with several provisions within the rule.”

Earlier this year CMS published its proposed regulations that would implement the MACRA law to revamp the Medicare physician payment system. On October 14^th, after consideration of over 4,000 comments about the proposed rules, CMS published the final rule that will govern the initial measurement period that begins January 1, 2017 for payment adjustments in 2019. 

Since its first appearance in the Medicare rules, the radiology community has been quarreling with CMS about the Multiple Procedure Payment Reduction (MPPR) on the professional component of certain diagnostic imaging services.  Finally, Congress has taken steps to mitigate the impact of this rule. 

Our first article in this series provided a list of questions to ask when evaluating a professional services Revenue Cycle Management (RCM) vendor for your radiology practice.  If your current RCM vendor cannot answer all of them positively, it’s time to look for a new vendor.  With a large number of RCM companies available in the market, how should you decide which one to choose?

In our previous articles in this series, we covered the top two reasons for radiology claims denials, Patient Eligibility Problems and Lack of Proper Authorization.  The third biggest reason for insurance claims denials is failure to document the medical necessity for the exam. Let’s take a look at this issue in detail so that your radiology practice can avoid such claims denials. 

Under regulations proposed earlier this year, physicians will face up to a 4% fee schedule reduction in 2019 for failure to meet the reporting requirements of the new Quality Payment Program in 2017. Now the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has announced that it is going to revise those proposed regulations to make it easier to avoid the negative adjustment and perhaps even earn a slight positive adjustment in 2019.  The final rules will be published around November 1, 2016 and will take effect on January 1, 2017.

The grace period during which Medicare would not impose penalties for less-than-specific coding under ICD-10-CM* is expiring on October 1, 2016.  The change from ICD-9 to ICD-10 diagnosis coding that took place on October 1, 2015 was a major adjustment for most physicians and their practice staff.  The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) recognized some of the difficulties that were going to be faced in the transition, and in response they issued a document of guidance describing certain ‘flexibilities’ that would initially be allowed.

This article continues our series focusing on how to avoid radiology claims denials. In our first article, we covered Patient Eligibility Problems.  Now let’s look at the topic of procedure authorization, specifically the failure to obtain proper authorization before the service is performed.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has issued its proposed revisions to the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule (MPFS) for 2017, thus beginning the annual cycle of review, comment, planning and preparation that goes along with this release.  Missing from this year’s proposed rule are provisions related to the Medicare quality reporting programs (PQRS, VM, MU-EHR*) that have been a large part of the rule in recent years.