Primary Care Coding Alert

Question: We have been participating in the physician quality reporting initiative (PQRI), and I heard that you could report a measure if your practice is implementing electronic health records (EHR). We started making the transition from paper to digital record-keeping in January 2010; is there an EHR measure in the PQRI pantheon? Missouri Subscriber Answer: There is a measure that you can report for using EHR: Measure 124 (Health Information Technology: Adoption/Use of Electronic Health Records [EHR]). According to CMS, providers satisfy the measure when they document "whether provider has adopted and is using health information technology." Coding: There are no diagnosis coding requirements for this measure. So if a new patient reports to the FP for a level-two E/M service and the encounter is documented via EHR, you'll report the following for the encounter: 99202 (Office or other outpatient visit for the evaluation and management of a new patient, [...]