HHS Office of Inspector General (OIG) recently issued an update to their 2015 Work Plan. The update is a summary of OIG’s planned reviews of HHS programs and billing. Providers should take note of the following planned reviews: Anesthesia Services- Payments for personally performed services. OIG will review personally performed anesthesia service claims reported with the “AA” service code modifier to determine if they met Medicare requirements. Reporting an incorrect servi

Most providers are aware that any overpayment by Medicare and Medicaid is to be promptly refunded to the government, but what about when patients overpay? There are many ways a patient credit might be created-maybe there was confusion over the correct co-pay or co-insurance amount or the estimation of the cost of procedures was too high and too much deductible was collected. Did you know there are rules governing how providers handle patient overpayments? For governmental

In April, the Senate repealed the Medicare Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) without any reference to delaying ICD-10 as the prior SGR fix had done. So, it looks like ICD-10 is on for October 1, 2015. But wait, there’s more! At the end of April, Texas Representative Ted Poe introduced the “Cutting Costly Codes Act of 2015” (resurrected CCCA of 2013). This proposed act would prohibit HHS from replacing ICD-9 with ICD-10 indefinitely (no time period indicated) in addition to requ