Medicare Compliance & Reimbursement

Plus: CMS reps cite current Medicare law and advise that practices should report just one inpatient care code per patient, per day. Although CMS has eliminated payment for consult codes, it will continue to honor split/shared visits -- as long as they are billed using E/M codes and follow the payment rules already in place. That's the word from CMS, where staffers aimed to straighten out confusion stemming from the January MLN Matters article SE1010, which offered several questions and answers regarding how to bill Medicare following the elimination of consult code payment. In the article, CMS noted that "the split/shared rules applying to E/M services remain in effect, including those cases where services would previously have been reported by CPT consultation codes." "We understand that this has caused some confusion, as there were -- and are -- different split/shared rules for consultation services compared to E/M services," noted CMS's Rebecca Cole noted [...]