Cardiology Coding Alert

Time to start counting pennies.

CMS recently announced a $.02 adjustment to the 2016 physician fee schedule conversion factor, which is now 35.8043. That number is down from the 35.8279 published in the 2016 Medicare fee schedule final rule in November 2015. It’s not much, but you may wish to recalculate your Medicare payments for 2016.

Why the change? Apparently, CMS made errors in the blending of 2014 utilization data that impacted the practice expense and professional liability insurance inputs for several codes says Michael A Granovsky, MD, FACEP, CPC, president of LogixHealth, a national coding and billing company based in Bedford, Mass.