Medical coders are typically behind the scenes of patient care, analyzing records, selecting codes for billing, and managing patient data. But to Jannifer Owens, a revenue cycle expert with over 20 years of coding experience at small and large hospitals, coders are storytellers and their stories are crucial to hospital billing and quality compliance.

PR’s “Coding Corner” focuses on coding, compliance, and documentation issues relating specifically to physician billing. This month’s tip comes from Deborah Marsh, senior content specialist for AAPC, a training and credentialing association for the business side of health care.

A “bold proposal” to reduce the documentation burden on physicians was released as part of CMS’s 2019 proposed Medicare Physician Fee Schedule (PFS). This seemed to have begun as an effort to listen to stakeholders and address the problems of out-of-date guidelines, cloning...

AI presents an entirely new landscape for defense against audits. The Trump administration has launched a program to employ artificial intelligence (AI) in Medicare audits. Use of AI will make obsolete current legal strategies leveraged when defending providers.

Patients come to your office looking for answers to their pain or lack of function. It’s critical that a doctor doesn’t do what one of my clients admitted to recently…“X-raying the patient’s wallet.” Your patients both deserve and expect your best recommendations. If you provide...

A change in government payment policy for dermatologists and other physicians in selecting office coding and billing for evaluation and management (E/M) is scheduled to begin January 2021.

The time to strengthen hospital compliance programs through claim validation is now. According to healthcare finance and information management leaders surveyed by HIMSS Media, clinical documentation and coding were the revenue cycle processes most vulnerable to errors...

Hospitals support the CMS' proposed changes to medical billing coding and new payments for opioid treatment programs, but they're worried that changes to quality measures could hurt providers.