Part B Insider (Multispecialty) Coding Alert

Published on Mon Mar 10, 2014 PDF

The government’s CERT report not only identifies the types of errors that practices make—it also profiles which specialties had the highest Part B error rates. Keep in mind that the error rate for all providers is 10.5 percent, so we’ve listed all Part B specialties that had higher rates than that average, as follows: 

Specialty Error Rate

Chiropractic                                                           51.4%

Private practice occupational therapist                32.2%

Vascular surgery                                                  29.4%

Clinical laboratory                                                  24.4%

Psychiatry                                                             22.1%

Clinical social worker                                            21.6%

Private practice physical therapist                       18.7%

Pulmonary disease                                               18.1%

Clinical psychology                                               17.8%

General practice                                                    15.8%

Internal medicine                                                    15.3%

Critical care (intensivists)                                       15.0%

Infectious disease                                                  13.8%

Gastroenterology                                                   13.7%

Family practice                                                        13.7%

Independent diagnostic testing facility (IDTF)        13.6%

Neurology                                                               12.4%

Diagnostic radiology                                               12.3%

Physician assistant                                                12.1%

Cardiology                                                              11.8%

Obstetrics/gynecology                                           11.0%

Allergy/immunology                                                10.9%

Emergency medicine                                              10.9%

Among the specialists with the lowest error rates were CRNAs at 1.4 percent, dermatologists at 2.4 percent, and hematology/oncology at 3.6 percent.