Q: What can we report for the physician if circumcision is done during delivery? Do we bill that on a separate claim for the infant? Is this a covered procedure?
While providers are still awaiting further guidance on the four modifiers CMS introduced as subsets of modifier -59 (distinct procedural service), the latest NCCI Manual does include clarification for certain scenarios involving the modifier.
Jennifer Avery, CCS, COC, CPC, CPC-I, writes about how the increased specificity in ICD-10-CM changes pregnancy coding and how to use gestational weeks in physician documentation to report trimesters.
Perhaps recognizing the massive undertaking for coding and HIM departments in 2015 with the implementation of ICD-10, the latest CPT® update includes a relatively small 367 changes for 2016. Shannon E. McCall, RHIA, CCS, CCS-P, CPC, CPC-I, CEMC, CCDS, and Peggy Blue, MPH, CPC, CEMC, CCS-P, review updates to the digestive system and E/M codes.
Sometimes you see documentation in the medical record entered by one physician and then by nobody else. Sometimes you see documentation entered by one physician and copy/pasted by everyone else.
I first attended a lecture on the "upcoming" ICD-10 changes that were expected in 1991 (when the rest of the world started transitioning). On October 1, 2015, a mere 24 years and countless lectures later, the U.S. finally adopted ICD-10 (via ICD-10-CM and PCS, which are both unique to the U.S. at this time).
Providers will only have to report one data collection modifier related to a C-APC in 2016. Jugna Shah, MPH, and Valerie A. Rinkle MPA, examine the requirements behind the modifier and how APCs will also be restructured next year.
Outpatient coding and billing errors lead to more than half of all automated denials by Recovery Auditors, according to the latest RACTrac survey from the American Hospital Association.