One of the many issues that Congress can and should address to help improve this situation is to eliminate surprise medical billing once and for all. However, as it works to pass legislation on this issue, Congress must ensure that whatever solution it enacts does not lead to adverse, unintended consequences for patients or our health care system.

New proposals that prioritize patients over paperwork and let doctors be doctors by reducing administrative burdens—including simplifying coding for evaluation-and-management (E/M) office visit services—were released this week by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).

The ICD-10 codes associated with head CT examinations do not accurately reflect patient complexity, according to a new study published in Current Problems in Diagnostic Radiology. This discrepancy, the authors added, could make a significant impact on radiologists moving forward.  

Advance-care planning (ACP) is the keystone of goal-concordant care, enabling patients to state their treatment preferences while they still have the mental capacity to do so. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has acknowledged this by accepting two Current Procedural Terminology (CPT®) reimbursement codes for these essential conversations.

Many readers may remember the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Transmittal 534. This was released in early August 2014, and it would have given Medicare contractors the ability to automatically deny associated physician claims when a hospital claim was denied. As written, if an inpatient admission was denied for...