Neurology & Pain Management Coding Alert

For Medicare, you'd use E/M codes instead. Your 99241-99255 revenue -- and your compliance risk -- could be headed for a nosedive. CMS wants to take the consult money pool and give it to office visits, among other services, meaning your consult revenue will go down. Rumors have abounded since the suggestion, so here's the latest information on what the proposal could mean for your coding and your practice's reimbursement. Pay Is Gone, Codes Will Stay The plan includes eliminating CMS reimbursement for all inpatient (99251-99255, Inpatient consultation for a new or established patient ...) and outpatient (99241-99245, Office consultation for a new or established patient ...) consultation codes. This change would "result in a net decrease in allowed charges of approximately $1 billion, which we are proposing to bundle back into the initial hospital care visits and initial nursing facility care visits," stated CMS's Whitney May during a July 9 CMS [...]