Legal

The U.S. Congress passed a bill in December that exempts doctors, nurse practitioners, and non-medical professionals from the Federal Trade Commission's "Red Flags" Rule, which helps protect consumers from identity theft.

Congress voted in late November to halt a 23% payment cut that was to take effect this month to physicians who accept Medicare.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services launched a division last month charged with testing "new ways of delivering healthcare and paying healthcare providers that can save money for Medicare and Medicaid while improving quality of care," including the patient-centered medical homes, according to CMS.

Learn the appropriate codes that you can use for reporting the monitoring of warfarin dosage for certain patients.

Nearly 7 out of 10 practices are likely to limit the number of new Medicare patients they accept unless Congress halts upcoming Medicare reimbursement cuts set to take place on December 1 and January 1, according to survey results of the MGMA.

The Joint Commission is developing standards to designate its accredited ambulatory healthcare organizations with a "Primary Care Home" status.

The elimination of reimbursement for consultation codes has impacted physician revenue greatly, in some instances. Learn how to address this in your practice.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act includes an element that could have a significant impact on physicians-not as medical providers, but as small business owners.

Medical practices that have implemented an electronic health record system report better financial performance than those that have not, according to the Medical Group Management Association?s newly released Electronic Health Records Impacts on Revenue, Costs, and Staffing: 2010 Report Based on 2009 Data.

A bill was introduced in the Senate to repeal the formula to calculate Medicare physician reimbursement.

As part of the federal government's strict mandate to reduce waste in all departments and to eliminate fraud and abuse in Medicare and Medicaid, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) have significantly revised and improved their calculations of Medicare fee-for-service (FFS) improper payments using "a more rigorous method" in calculating error rate.

AAFP President Lori Helm,MD, recently disputed an article by White House advisors in the Annals of Internal Medicine that stated that healthcare reform would lead to fewer solo and 2-physician practices.

Today's independent physician is overwhelmed by the challenges posed by the 3 "big Rs": reimbursement, regulation, and recession. As a result, many are falling victim to hospitals, which see the opportunity to buy up individual practices unable to cope with the 3 Rs, and thereby control healthcare in their region.

Employers that offer their employees limited medical plans are impacted by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010, since they are considered group health insurance plans.

Two recent studies have refocused attention on the question of whether apologizing for medical errors can reduce the cost of malpractice.

The financial services reform legislation passed in July contains numerous provisions, two of which will be of interest to physicians. One concerns banking and lending; the other involves investing.

The Certification Commission for Health Information Technology of Chicago, and the Drummond Group Inc. of Austin, Texas, were named in August by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology as the first technology review bodies that have been authorized to test and certify electronic health record systems for compliance with the standards and certification criteria that were issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services earlier this year.

The not-for-profit Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society has introduced Quality 101, a Web site designed to be a primer on the basics and metrics of quality measurement and improvement.

The U.S. Census Bureau released last month 2007 estimates of health insurance coverage for its states and 3,140 counties.

If you provide care to a patient, even if he or she normally sees another physician for such care, you have established a duty to treat that patient and are a potential defendant if something goes wrong. Learn your responsibilities as well as ways to minimize your risk in such situations.

The increasing use of electronic health records has led to a collaboration between the International Health Terminology Standards Development Organization (IHTSDO) and the World Health Organization to harmonize WHO classifications with the Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine?Clinical Terms maintained and distributed by IHTSDO.

Doctors and nurses were among 94 people in five cities charged in July for alleged participation in schemes to collectively submit more than $251 million in false claims to Medicare, according to the Department of Justice and Department of Health and Human Services.

Less than two months remain for physicians to file a claim for the $350 million settlement reached against UnitedHealth Group and its Ingenix subsidiary for flawed out-of-network reimbursement database.

If managing your patients' chronic pain requires controlled drugs, you will want to take these steps to reduce your liability and help your patients avoid addiction.

You or the patient can end the treatment relationship, but until it's over, you have a duty to treat and are a potential defendant if treatment goes awry. Here's the right way to end things.