Extenders Act addresses Money Follows the Person. Home health agencies may still be waiting on legislative help for Patient-Driven Groupings Model concerns, but they have secured a victory in a newly enacted law: the Medicaid Extenders Act of 2019. The [...]
One MAC releases new stats about the medical review program. As Targeted Probe & Educate rolls on, home health agencies are increasingly getting flattened by the new medical review program. So show new TPE results from HHH Medicare Administrative Contractor [...]
Plan ahead to maximize online presence. If you fail to present a robust online presence, you may be losing out on a valuable patient referral stream. But it’s easy for a potential marketing tool to turn into a referral-draining hindrance [...]
Question: One of our psychiatrists recently reviewed a patient and arrived at a diagnosis of opioid induced psychotic disorder. When I looked at the ICD-10 codes, I saw many codes for opioid related disorders and got confused. Which of these codes [...]
Question: Our oncologist has documented the diagnosis as ‘well differentiated neuroendocrine carcinoma with 2 lesions in the liver.’ Please suggest an appropriate ICD-9-CM code for this diagnosis. New York Subscriber Answer: For neuroendocrine tumors, you look at codes in the [...]
Question: Recently, our surgeon performed spinal fusion (22630) on an extremely obese patient. The surgeon feels as though the patient’s weight was a complicating factor in the surgery and subsequent recovery. Can we gain additional compensation for this, perhaps using [...]
Question: Recently, our surgeon performed spinal fusion (22630) on an extremely obese patient. The surgeon feels as though the patients weight was a complicating factor in the surgery and subsequent recovery. Can we gain additional compensation for this, perhaps using [...]
Watch out for further fraud-fighting measures such as an HHA surety bond. The home care industry once again served as Medicare's whipping boy in a Senate Finance Committee hearing on Medicare fraud April 24. The hearing was titled "Anatomy of [...]
Question: The physician ordered a TSH test with the diagnosis "decreased TSH." How should we code this?Answer: The correct code for the lab test is 84443 (Thyroid stimulating hormone [TSH]). The best ICD-9 code for the narrative diagnosis of "decreased [...]
Question: What is the ICD-9 code for "hot flushes?" New York Subscriber Answer: The code depends on whether you have specifics about the hot flushes. Flushing/hot flushes is not a definitive diagnosis but rather a symptom. It is described as [...]
