In the last few years, cardiology has had to manage with negligible fee increase while having to cope up with numerous coding and billing changes. While cardiologists may have seen an increase of 1 to 2 percent increase in Medicare’s fees, they have had put up with reduction in medical reimbursements beyond permissible limits. To a large extent, these practice-related medical reimbursements reductions could have been triggered by a series of relentless medical billing and coding changes that have seemingly been more challenging than ever before.
It all began around 2009 when codes for implanted devices were replaced with an entire set of new codes. Notable among such revolutionary codes were the ones that would be applied specifically to internet (remote) device checks, codes for devices with leads in 3 chambers, ICM device follow-up codes, and codes for per procedural checks. While this coding overhaul may have helped streamline Cardiology Billing, cardiologists’ medical billing has not been fully able to decipher them to their best advantage.
Quite parallel to these intermittent cardiology coding revisions, 30 and 90 day global periods too have been active for follow-up for certain devices. What is more, the new codes are specific to either an interrogation evaluation or a reprogramming evaluation without being inquisitive of the happening of reprogramming. It is quite possible that cardiology practices may have found cardiology coding and billing rather difficult.
Interestingly, wearable cardiac telemetry devices too have been assigned specific codes, and it is impossible to assign unlisted codes that previously could be applied with slight modification. Moreover, these wearable cardiac telemetry devices are equally susceptible to complication of global periods as in the case of certain other cardiac devices. Yet again, cardiologists’ medical billing and coding may have found this coding-specificity an unusual thing.
Not least of them all, bundling multiple procedures under a single has limited cardiologists’ ability to breakdown a larger service into smaller components. As a result, insurance payors can now insist on bundling an echo with both a Doppler and color flow and a stress flow into a single and comprehensive CPT code. While this may have reduced multiple coding and billing, it certainly has limited cardiologists’ ability to maximize revenues from breaking down larger services into smaller components.
While Cardiology Medical Billing has already been affected by these monumental changes, cardiologists may still face harder challenges during reporting and insurance follow-up under the ensuing ICD-10 billing and coding regime. With the possibility of coding specificity, bundling, and billing and coding restrictions getting magnified even more, cardiologists may well have look beyond conservative cardiology medical billing practices. Hence, cardiology medical coding and billing, integrated with enhanced coding compliance, electronic processes, and competent billing practices could help measure up to challenges in insurance reporting and follow-up.
Medicalbillersandcoders.com has verifiable success as a leading and progressive medical billing consortium, more so for cardiology billing. Our cardiology medical billing mediation has been backed with deployment of experienced, techno-savvy, and competent medical billing specialists. As a result cardiologists across the 50 states in the U.S. can look forward to engaging medical specialists who have evolved with cardiology medical billing challenges.