Practice Management

Most practices will be required to have a plan in place by May 2009 to alert them to signs of potential theft of their patients' identities and to help prevent spread of the crime.

Nothing reveals the seamy underbelly of medicine like an exhibit booth that's run out of freebies.

A few steps toward eco-friendliness could improve your practice - and your world.

CMS has tweaked the rules on coding for its "Welcome to Medicare" program.

The physician should determine how to appropriately code sleep and polysomnography studies that are interrupted.

Have you recently visited with a patient suffering from "cyberchondria"?

Almost half of physicians report consulting a web-based reference tool during a patient visit, mostly to check drug dosing, interaction, and side effect information.

If I'm unable to get another physician to take over my charts, what options do I have for storing them?

If I opt out of Medicare, can I charge patients the same reimbursement rate that Medicare allows?

The window of opportunity to retroactively bill for services for a physician awaiting credentialing has been reduced from 27 months to 30 days.

To receive payment for arthrocentesis and related procedures, attach a modifier –59 to the successive services.

The rule requiring insurers to process claims with an NPI has created the necessity for providers to have one-no matter their circumstances.

Insurers are rating the quality of your care. Do you know what they're saying?

You can't stop online ratings, but you can stop fretting about them.

Learn what you need to know to cut down on reimbursement hassles.

In October, Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Dakota backed a statewide medical home initiative in which participating doctors will receive free clinical analytics and reporting software to help them serve as the coordinator.

More than half of U.S. internal medicine physicians and rheumatologists who responded to a survey by the British Medical Journal report using a placebo treatment with patients.

Nearly 90 percent of medical professionals believe patients are less likely to sue after a mistake if they receive an apology and explanation for the error.

CMS has suspended contract work as part of its Recovery Audit Contractor program in response to protests filed by two unsuccessful bidders.

Downcoding, whether by audit or during routine claims processing, could be on the rise - particularly for practices with electronic health records, which are able to code for higher levels of service with relative ease.

If the federal government has its way, a quality reporting initiative from Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services could pave the way toward establishing a pay-for-performance system.

If 80 percent of the population maintained a personal health record, it would save the U.S. $21 billion a year on health-care costs, according to a recently released study.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced in late October that it will award an incentive payment of 2 percent of a physician's total Medicare allowed charges to doctors who use e-prescribing systems next year.

Georgia plans to unveil in December a consumer-focused "transparency" health website that will contain quality and cost information on the state's hospitals.

Though the use of computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging has skyrocketed in the last decade, the benefits of the technology's increased availability are not clear, according to a new study.