Pathology/Lab Coding Alert

Expect "facility" payment to impact your bottom line.With a last-minute CMS announcement to delay implementing its newly revised place-of-service (POS) rule from April 1 to October, 2012, you'll have a little more time to get familiar with changes that could have a huge impact on your lab and pathology billing and reimbursement. An official written CMS announcement of the delay was not available as of press time.Unless CMS makes significant rule changes prior to implementation, you can expect to use a lot more of POS code 21 (Inpatient hospital) and 22 (Outpatient hospital) on your claims. That's especially true if you're an independent lab that's been listing POS 81 (Independent laboratory) for most specimens that come your way. CMS update: The change is thanks to CMS Transmittal 2407 that clarifies and modifies POS coding rules in the Medicare Claims Processing Manual (CMS IOM Pub. 100-04). You can read the transmittal [...]