Opinion

Latest News


CME Content


Q: We are a private practice that has several physicians who follow their patients in the hospital. There are times that the patient is in observation, and they are called to help decide whether to admit them or not. Should our physicians bill initial and subsequent observation codes for these visits?

octors groups are applauding newly-approved national legislation to fight opioid abuse while calling for more funds to implement many of the bill’s programs. The Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act of 2016 (CARA) passed both houses of Congress in July after Democrats backed off their demands that higher levels of funding be included in the bill.

Physicians still complacent about their HIPAA compliance programs could soon be subjected to the Office for Civil Rights’ (OCR) latest Phase 2 HIPAA Desk Audit Program, which began in mid-July.

It’s come to this: healthcare entities have so successfully bamboozled American consumers with their wacky bills and lack of pricing transparency, compounded with robbing middle-class Paul to pay uninsured Peter, that a chirpy contest for entrepreneurs-yes, a call for people to start an entire business to decode medical bills-is the best chance the American people have.

Sometimes we get so focused on the “now” that we forget to look back. It’s a bit like this with electronic health records: The focus tends to be more on the challenges than on the benefits.

The states of Arkansas and Texas rate last and next-to-last in telemedicine practice standards, an issue that has gained prominence in the medical community in recent years, according to a recent report by the American Telemedicine Association.

There’s no doubt about it: Physician burnout is real and it affects an alarming number of us across the nation. While physicians focus on their patients, the practice environment is filled with invisible stresses that weigh on physicians and cause burnout.

Medical groups need to spend a lot of money to outfit, maintain and manage health information technology in their practices-more than $32,500 per year in for every single full-time doctor in the practice, according to a recent study.

Industry trade groups and experts are voicing approval of the announcement from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) that it would allow providers to choose the pace at which they comply with the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA).

The question keeps coming up as to whether my nurse practitioner can bill incident-to while counseling patients and bill based on time spent counseling. I get mixed reports on this. What is the answer? Can they bill by time?