Home Health & Hospice Week

You might have an easier time getting physicians more involved in your patients’ care, thanks to new provisions in the proposed Medicare Physician Fee Schedule for calendar year 2015.

“Medicare continues to emphasize primary care management services by beginning to make separate payment for chronic care management (CCM) services beginning in 2015,” the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services notes in a release about the proposal. “In last year’s final rule, we established policy to make separate payment for non-face-to-face chronic care management services for Medicare beneficiaries who have multiple, significant chronic conditions (two or more).” Chronic care management services include regular development and revision of a plan of care, communication with other treating health professionals, and medication management, CMS adds.

In the proposed rule released July 3, CMS plans a payment rate of $41.92 for the CCM code that can be billed no more frequently than once per month per qualified patient. “We also propose to allow greater flexibility in the supervision of clinical staff providing CCM services,” the agency adds.

And CMS plans to loosen up on standards it floated last year. “We are not proposing to establish separate standards that practitioners and practices furnishing this service would have to meet,” the agency says. “Upon further review, we believe the scope of service requirements for CCM, most of which were finalized last year, would be sufficient for practitioners to deliver CCM.” CMS is proposing a requirement on standards for electronic health records, though.