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Natural disasters can cause tragedies as well as serious setbacks for individuals, families, businesses and organizations. A variety of relief programs are available if you are displaced or need emergency assistance.

What are some of the positive and negative approaches people leverage when making decisions in a recent ABL Advisor article.

Reimbursements collected directly from patients are increasing in size and value, and as opposed to Medicare or insurance companies, are comparatively difficult to collect, resulting in the erosion of bottom lines across the industry.

It’s time for new 2017 CPT® code updates. Moderate sedation is no longer included in any procedures, telemedicine codes have been added, the surgery section has the largest number of code changes and there are new codes for dialysis circuits.

As the International Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision - also known as ICD-10 - enters its second year, be prepared to use the thousands of new codes introduced on October 1, 2016.

Consolidation in health care facilitates the ability to reduce costs through economies of scale and the participation in the ACA risk sharing payment models. It also increases costs due to increasing market share and negotiating clout against private insurers.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has released the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule Final Rule. 2017 will be the first year for Merit-Based Incentives Payment System. CMS finalized a data collection strategy to reduce the reporting burden.

As per the Affordable Care Act, all 'covered entities' must 'take steps to provide meaningful access' to Limited English Proficient patients. Covered entities include hospitals, health clinics and nursing homes.

The Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA) replaced SGR with a new payment approach known as the Quality Payment Program. CMS has made its position clear that our health care system will be moving away from a fee-for-service world.

The recently completed and released Physician Fee Schedule Final Rule for 2017 focuses on improving primary care payments for services provided by primary care physicians and other practitioners.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) reported an update last week to the proposed implementation of the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA) offering physicians 4 different approaches to implement MACRA in their practices.

Health care providers are utilizing electronic health records (EHR) and as the transition from paper medical records to EHR continues, payers and auditors are noticing a problem with these records: cloning. Medicare will not reimburse services when it deems the documentation is cloned.

Proposed Changes to the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule for 2015. This initiative could have a profound effect on Medicare reimbursement and billing procedures for surgeons and their staff. CMS issued a proposed rule that would update payment policies and rates for services including the following.

Don't delay the beneficial operating efficiencies that are related to the ICD-10 implementation. A goal of ICD-10 implementation has been to improve documentation to better support the increased specificity of the ICD-10 diagnosis codes. Compliance will increase billing accuracy.

Medicare Administrative Contractors have started sending letters to providers, listing all owners who require fingerprinting. Failure to respond could result in either revocation of Medicare billing privileges or denial of Medicare enrollment applications.

The Affordable Care Act established a requirement for all enrolled providers and suppliers to revalidate their Medicare enrollment information under new enrollment screening criteria. This applies to those providers and suppliers that were enrolled in Medicare prior to March 25, 2011.

With the deadline for eligible professionals to attest to the meaningful use EHR Incentive Program rapidly approaching, attention has been turned to the CMS attestation website. However, there is an issue with the current CMS website used to report.

The goal of the Transforming Clinical Practice Initiative is to create and support networks developed to help physicians have timely access to health information and result in improved health outcomes. Find out more about the Transforming Clinical Practice Initiative.

The OIG has identified continued abuse of modifier 59, Distinct Procedural Service. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services indicate that new Healthcare Common Procedure Coding System (HCPCS) modifiers are considered subsets of modifier 59.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services sent letters to group practices and eligible professionals who did not satisfactorily report PQRS quality data measures in 2013 and will receive a negative 1.5% payment adjustment on their Medicare Part B payments.