Oncology & Hematology Coding Alert

If the proposed 2008 physician fee schedule that CMS released in July goes through as planned, the reimbursement for services your oncologists provide to Medicare patients will face a 9.9 percent cut next year.

Beyond the across-the-board 9.9 percent pay cut, specialists in hematology/oncology and radiation oncology will not see as much of an impact as some of their colleagues next year. And nuclear medicine physicians will be among the new rule's biggest winners.

Even better: CMS will adjust the work RVUs for more than 50 procedures, in line with the Relative Value Scale Update Committee's recommendations. Work RVUs will go up for 33 codes and decrease for 10 codes.

Most nursing facility care codes (99304-99310) will see RVU increases. But home visits (99341-99350) will stay the same, instead of increasing as some physicians had requested.

However: None of the common oncology codes, including chemotherapy (96401-96417) and non-chemotherapy (90760-90779) injections and infusions, will see any change -- up or down -- in work RVUs in 2008.

What should you do? -The best a practice can do now is to build up cash reserves; billers/collectors should collect every dollar allowed,- says Gail Lorenzen, CHBC, senior consultant with The Sage Group in Phoenix.

Get up and running with the Physician Quality Reporting Initiative (PQRI) program as well, says Denae M. Merrill, CPC-E/M, coder for Covenant MSO in Saginaw, Mich. -At the least, you get ready for what could become mandatory in the future, and at best, you get a little extra money for your efforts.-

Tip: Visit the AMA's Web site at www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/category/14332.html for information that will -help everyone from providers to billers to patients understand what is happening and their proposed changes to help,- Merrill says.