Practice Management Alert

Tip: The physician doesn't have to be the one to document the history.If your aren't billing higher level E/M services because your physician glosses over a patient's past medical, family, and social history (PMFSH), you may be missing out on up to $69 per E/M. Accurately counting the number of PMFSH items could result in more money for an encounter, because the top-level E/M codes require PMFSH elements. Learn these three quick tips to ensure you physician is capturing, and you're recognizing, every history component the patient mentions.Determine the Level of PMFSHFor coding and billing purposes, the history portion of an E/M service requires all three elements -- history of present illness (HPI), review of systems (ROS), and past medical, family and social history (PMFSH).Therefore, the PMFSH helps determine patient history level, which has a great effect on the E/M level you can report. If you do not know the PMFSH [...]