Radical Changes on EM Payments and Documentation Requirements Proposed by CMS
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has proposed radical changes for the new and established outpatient visits (99201-99215) with regards to documentation and creating a uniform payment for evaluation and management (E/M) services, regardless of the level of service reported. Highlights of the Proposed Changes PROPOSAL 1: Documentation Requirements Gets Flexible Simplify the documentation of history and exam for established patients such that, for both of these key components, practitioners would only be required to focus their documentation on what has changed since the last visit or on pertinent items that have not changed, rather than re- documenting a defined list of required elements such as review of a specified number of systems and family/social history. CMS also proposed, for both new and established patients, practitioners would…