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Pathology/Lab Coding Alert

Physician Signatures:

It's Official: CMS Retracts Lab Requisition Signature Requirement

Published on Mon Aug 08, 2011

Long awaited proposal is finally here.Clinical laboratories can exhale at last. On June 30, CMS published a proposal to retract its policy requiring a physician or non-physician-practitioner (NPP) signature on every paper lab requisition. The policy had been set to go into effect earlier this year, but was delayed several times due to massive opposition throughout the industry.Follow the Trail to 'No Signature'CMS had initially announced that the lab signature requirement would go into effect on Jan. 1, but later delayed it until April 1. However, on March 31, CMS announced that it would further delay the requirement and "focus for the remainder of 2011 on changing the regulation that requires signatures on laboratory  requisitions because of concerns that physicians, NPPs, and clinical diagnostic laboratories are having difficulty complying with this policy." That gave labs hope that the requirement would be killed for good sometime this year.In black and white: [...]
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