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General Surgery Coding Alert

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CMS Proposes Elimination of Consultation Pay on Jan. 1

Published on Tue Oct 27, 2009

The goal: Eliminate confusion over transfers of care. If you cringe every time you see the word "consultation" in your surgeon's documentation, CMS may have just the news you've been hoping for. Find out what the proposal would mean for your coding and for your practice's reimbursement. Dig Into the Details of the Proposal In the July 13 Federal Register CMS announced a proposal to eliminate consultation codes starting on Jan. 1, 2010. The plan includes the elimination of all inpatient (99251-99255, Inpatient consultation for a new or established patient ...) and outpatient (99241-99245, Office consultation for a new or established patient ...) consultation codes. This change would "result in a net decrease in allowed charges of approximately $1 billion, which we are proposing to bundle back into the initial hospital care visits and initial nursing facility care visits," stated CMS's Whitney May during a July 9 CMS Open Door [...]
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