To improve patient care and create transparency, Medicare mandated a pay-for-quality reporting program for hospital outpatient services in 2009. The related measures can impact hospital payment if not met, thus creating financial incentives for hospitals to report them. The measures are intended to evaluate the regularity of outpatient treatments known to provide the best results for most patients with a particular condition.  

During the next three broadcasts of Talk-Ten-Tuesdays, listeners will be introduced to these measures and learn how coding and documentation integrity professionals can get involved in reporting and analyzing the data. The exclusive three-part series will include the following:

Part 1: Hospital outpatient quality reporting program
Part 2: Measures that require abstracting
Part 3: Outcome-based measures

The live broadcast will also feature these other segments:

• Coding Report: Laurie Johnson, senior healthcare consultant with Revenue Cycle Solutions, LLC, will report on the newly proposed codes presented during last week’s Coordination and Maintenance Committee meeting. Johnson will also conduct the Talk Ten Tuesdays Listener Survey.
  
  
• Mental Health Report: Residual Rage: Vaccine shortages, folks cutting in line to get vaccinated, and on-again, off-again guidance concerning opening schools, businesses, and even mask-wearing have all been major COVID-19-related issues. So it’s little wonder there’s pent-up pandemic anger and frustration. There is an ICD-10 code for irritability and anger, and Dr. H. Steven Moffic, award-winning author and internationally renowned psychiatrist, will discuss it – and how and why many of us feel today.
• News Desk: Timothy Powell, compliance expert and ICD10monitor national correspondent, will anchor the Talk Ten Tuesdays News Desk.
• TalkBack: Erica Remer, MD, founder and president of Erica Remer, MD, Inc. and Talk Ten Tuesdays co-host, will report on a subject that has caught her attention during her popular segment.

Whether you work for a full-scale enterprise or a smaller healthcare facility, the importance of revenue integrity programs is gaining increased importance, especially in the light of renewed auditing activities anticipated under the Biden Administration.  

Beyond ensuring accurate billing and collection, revenue integrity should strengthen reimbursement performance and provide sound financial practices, according to Susan Gatehouse, founder and CEO for Axea Solutions, who will report on our lead story during the next edition of Talk Ten Tuesdays.

The live broadcast will also feature these other segments:

• Coding Report: Laurie Johnson, senior healthcare consultant with Revenue Cycle Solutions, LLC, will continue her reporting on proposed codes expected to be discussed during the Coordination and Maintenance Committee meeting, which begins on Tuesday, March 9 and concludes Wednesday, March 10. Johnson will also conduct the Talk Ten Tuesdays Listener Survey.
  
  
• Tuesday Focus: Congress passed the "No Surprises Act" at the end of 2020, but what does that mean for providers, exactly? Nationally recognized professional coder and auditor Terry Fletcher will share what the Act requires medical providers to do when seeing an out-of-network patient under a non-government payor, and how this will impact your practice revenue and patients. This new law is set to take effect on Jan. 1, 2022, so time is of the essence to work on compliance strategy.
  
  
• News Desk: Timothy Powell, compliance expert and ICD10monitor national correspondent, will anchor the Talk Ten Tuesdays News Desk.
  
  
• TalkBack: Erica Remer, MD, founder and president of Erica Remer, MD, Inc. and Talk Ten Tuesdays co-host, will report on a subject that has caught her attention during her popular segment.

Will there be an ICD-10 code for post-traumatic visual disturbance? Or for an encounter for PPD test reading and medication review? Or prolonged grief disorder?

In light of COVID-19, the ICD-10 Coordination and Maintenance Committee (C&M) meeting will be online-only, as was the case last spring, at the outset of the pandemic. This year, the two-day meeting begins next Tuesday, March 9, continuing through March 10, bringing together representatives from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC’s) National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), various medical societies, medical device vendors, and the general public.

Senior healthcare consultant Laurie Johnson will have an exclusive preview of Day 1 during the next edition of Talk Ten Tuesdays. Joining her will be nationally prominent psychiatrist H. Steven Moffic, MD, who will report on prolonged grief: an ICD-10-CM diagnostic topic expected to be discussed during the Coordination and Maintenance meeting, and a marker of America’s grim milestone of more than 500,000 souls lost to the deadly coronavirus.

The live broadcast will also feature these other segments:

• RegWatch: Stanley Nachimson, former CMS career professional-turned-well-known healthcare IT authority, will report on the latest regulatory news coming out of Washington.
  
  
• News Desk: Timothy Powell, compliance expert and ICD10monitor national correspondent, will anchor the Talk Ten Tuesdays News Desk.
  
  
• TalkBack:  Erica Remer, MD, founder and president of Erica Remer, MD, Inc. and Talk Ten Tuesdays co-host, will report on coding the consequences of COVID-19 vaccination

Infection rates from the coronavirus are declining. Vaccination rates are increasing. And while that’s good news, word on the ground is anything but good. Vaccination distribution in the U.S. has been, by most accounts, uneven, with reports of supplies not keeping up with demand in many states. And this week, a spate of bad weather, particularly in Texas and states across the Southeast, is hampering vaccination efforts – and in some cases, cancelling mass inoculation events.
 
During the next live edition of Talk-Ten-Tuesdays Susan Gatehouse, founder and CEO for Axea Solutions, and Deborah Grider, senior healthcare consultant for Karen Zupko and Associates, will report on vaccination rates in their respective states: Georgia and Indiana.
It will mark one of several segments making up Part IV of Vaccination Nation, an exclusive series being produced by ICD10monitor for Talk-Ten-Tuesdays. Also during the program, TTT executive producer Chuck Buck and co-host Erica Remer, MD will answer listeners’ questions in real time. Joining them on the program will be Lynne Comstock, who, like Remer, is a volunteer inoculator in Corpus Christi, Texas. Remer is volunteering with the Medical Reserve Corps of the Cuyahoga County Board of Health in Ohio.

The global COVID-19 pandemic has now resulted in more than 110 million cases worldwide, as well as 2.45 million deaths. More than 28 million of those cases and more than half a million deaths have occurred in the U.S. alone.

However, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently reported that more than 56 million doses of the vaccine have been administered across the country.

Still, there’s the disturbing trend of vaccine hesitancy. Driven by misinformation, lack of trust, and concerns about safety and efficacy, vaccine hesitancy is considered to be one of the top global health threats, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

The live broadcast will also feature these other segments:

• News Desk: Ronald Hirsch, MD will anchor the Talk Ten Tuesdays News Desk.
• The Coding Report: Laurie Johnson, senior healthcare consultant for Revenue Cycle Solutions, LLC, will report on the latest ICD-10 codes.

They’re standing in long lines, often in the early morning darkness and in the cold, waiting for access to community vaccination centers all across the country. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), more than 1 million doses are being administered daily to grateful recipients.

Yet there’s still the disturbing trend of vaccine hesitancy. Driven by misinformation, lack of trust, and concerns about safety and efficacy, vaccine hesitancy is considered to be one of the top global health threats, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

During Part III of Vaccination Nation, an exclusive series produced by ICD10monitor for Talk-Ten-Tuesdays, program host and executive producer Chuck Buck and co-host Erica Remer, MD will conduct another live town hall, answering listeners’ questions in real time. 

The global COVID-19 pandemic has now resulted in nearly 108 million cases worldwide, as well as 2.37 million deaths. More than 27 million of those cases and more than 483,000 deaths have occurred in the U.S. alone.

Two companies, Moderna and Pfizer, have had their COVID vaccines approved for use by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Since vaccine distribution began in the U.S. in mid-December 2020, more than 44 million doses have been administered, reaching slightly more than 10 percent of the total U.S. population, according to federal data recently collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and reported on by NPR.

A third company, Johnson & Johnson, earlier this month applied for FDA approval for its single-dose vaccine, and company officials have said they will be able to produce 100 million doses by June. Officials with both Moderna and Pfizer have reportedly said that they plan to have produced 200 million doses apiece by the summer.
The live broadcast will also feature these other segments:

• News Desk: Timothy Powell, compliance expert and ICD10monitor national correspondent, will anchor the Talk Ten Tuesdays News Desk.
• The Coding Report: Laurie Johnson, senior healthcare consultant for Revenue Cycle Solutions, LLC, will report on the latest ICD-10 codes. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is forecasting that there will be more than 500,000 deaths from the coronavirus in the U.S. by the third week of February. In the meantime, the U.S. vaccine rollout fell short of federal projections, according to Bloomberg News, which noted that the initial round of shots, delivered through early January, was distributed through hospitals.

Then there’s the disturbing trend of vaccine hesitancy. Driven by misinformation, lack of trust, and concerns about safety and efficacy, vaccine hesitancy is considered to be one of the top global health threats, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

During Part II of Vaccination Nation, an exclusive series produced by ICD10monitor for Talk Ten Tuesdays, program host and executive producer Chuck Buck and co-host Erica Remer, MD will conduct a live town hall, answering listeners’ questions in real time. Remer is a volunteer inoculator with the Medical Reserve Corps of the Cuyahoga County Board of Health in Ohio.

The global COVID-19 pandemic has now resulted in more than 104 million cases worldwide, as well as 2.27 million deaths. More than 27 million of those cases and nearly 460,000 deaths have occurred in the U.S. alone.

Two companies, Moderna and Pfizer, have had their COVID vaccines approved for use by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Since vaccine distribution began in the U.S. in mid-December 2020, more than 29 million doses have been administered, reaching 7.2 percent of the total U.S. population, according to federal data recently collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and reported on by NPR.

A third company, Johnson & Johnson, is expected to apply for FDA approval for its single-dose vaccine shortly, and company officials have said they will be able to produce 100 million doses by June. Officials with both Moderna and Pfizer have reportedly said that they plan to have produced 200 million doses apiece by the summer.

The live broadcast will also feature these other segments:

• News Desk: Timothy Powell, compliance expert and ICD10monitor national correspondent, will anchor the Talk Ten Tuesdays News Desk.
  
  
• The Coding Report: Laurie Johnson, senior healthcare consultant for Revenue Cycle Solutions, LLC, will report on the latest ICD-10 codes.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is forecasting that there will be more than 500,000 deaths from the coronavirus in the U.S. by the third week of February. In the meantime, there has been a flurry of activity by major pharmaceutical companies to work together to help meet the huge demand for vaccines, all against the backdrop of an emerging trend: vaccine hesitancy. Driven by misinformation, lack of trust, and concerns about safety and efficacy, vaccine hesitancy is considered to be one of the top global health threats, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

In the first portion of an exclusive series produced by ICD10monitor for Talk Ten Tuesdays, Erica Remer, MD will kick things off with a report on the subject, including a listener survey conducted during the live broadcast. Remer is a volunteer inoculator with the Medical Reserve Corps of the Cuyahoga County Board of Health.

The live broadcast will also feature these other segments:

• COVID-19 Report: John Foggle, MD, a frontline physician caring for COVID-19 patients at Rhode Island’s alternative site field hospital as a member of Brown University’s emergency medicine department, will report on the latest news coming from the frontlines of America’s battle against the deadly coronavirus.
  
  
• RegWatch: Stanley Nachimson, former Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) career professional-turned-well-known healthcare IT authority, will report on how healthcare and politics are inextricably entwined.
  
  
• News Desk: Timothy Powell, compliance expert and ICD10monitor national correspondent, will anchor the Talk-Ten-Tuesdays News Desk.
  
  
• The Coding Report: Laurie Johnson, senior healthcare consultant for Revenue Cycle Solutions, LLC, will report on the latest ICD-10 codes.
  
  
• TalkBack: Erica Remer, MD, founder and president of Erica Remer, MD, Inc. and Talk Ten Tuesdays co-host, will report our lead story—the first installment in a three-part series on Vaccination Nation.

There has long been a focus on improving documentation for the purpose of maximizing the capture of complications and morbidities and major complications and morbidities (CCs and MCCs). As value-based purchasing is becoming more widely adopted, the importance of improving documentation is becoming more relevant. Case in point: the importance of coagulopathy documentation and its impact on perioperative hemorrhage and hematoma, a patient safety indictor (PSI-9).

Reporting our lead story during the next edition of Talk Ten Tuesdays will be Dr. Ahmed Abuabdou, Associate Chief Medical Officer and Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) Medical Center.

The live broadcast will also feature these other segments:

• Tuesday Focus: Telehealth: The proliferation of telehealth, now identified in the 2021 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) Work Plan, means that you will need to be extra diligent when coding the service in order to be compliant, according to Terry Fletcher, nationally recognized professional auditor and coder, who will return to the broadcast to report on the topic with a focus on audio-only check-ins.
  
  
• News Desk: Timothy Powell, compliance expert and ICD10monitor national correspondent, will anchor the Talk Ten Tuesdays News Desk.
  
  
• The Coding Report: Laurie Johnson, senior healthcare consultant for Revenue Cycle Solutions, LLC, will report on the latest ICD-10 codes.
  
  
• TalkBack: Erica Remer, MD, founder and president of Erica Remer, MD, Inc. and Talk Ten Tuesdays co-host, will report on another thought-provoking topic that has captured her attention.

The U.S. death toll from the coronavirus is approaching the number of Americans killed in World War II, and as America is experiencing another surge of infections, the once-unthinkable subject of rationing care is now being debated.

But how is care to be rationed? Is there a uniform guide for triaging care, as the availability of all beds, ICU beds, ventilators, and other hospital equipment is weighed, based on the acuity of each patient?

As John Zelem, MD wrote recently for RACmonitor, “we have entered a time in which drastic scenarios demand drastic measures (care rationing). We all look forward to the time when we can look back on these challenging times as a unique response to a fairly unique medical emergency.”

Reporting our lead story during the next live edition of Talk Ten Tuesdays will be Dr. Zelem, founder of Streamline Consulting Solutions.

The live broadcast will also feature these other segments:

• CDI Report: Cheryl Ericson, clinical program manager for Iodine Software, will have the CDI Report, in which she is expected to ask if every item in the medical record is truly “documentation.”
  
  
• News Desk: Timothy Powell, compliance expert and ICD10monitor national correspondent, will anchor the Talk Ten Tuesdays News Desk.
  
  
• The Coding Report: Laurie Johnson, senior healthcare consultant for Revenue Cycle Solutions, LLC, will report on the latest ICD-10 codes.
  
  
• TalkBack: Erica Remer, MD, founder and president of Erica Remer, MD, Inc. and Talk Ten Tuesdays co-host, will report on another thought-provoking topic that has captured her attention.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) 2021 Final Rule and 2021 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule (MPFS) are effective Jan. 1, 2021, and both affect reimbursement.

But in a rare move, CMS increased the conversion factor (CF) in the MPFS twice in one week as a result of the COVID-19 relief bill, which added a hike of 3.75 percent.

For an update on the major CMS changes for 2021 that will affect your reimbursement under the Part B Physician Fee Schedule, tune in to the next live edition of Talk Ten Tuesdays, coming your way Tuesday, Jan. 12 from 10-10:30 a.m. EST. That’s when nationally recognized professional coder and auditor Terry Fletcher will join the broadcast to report on all the relevant details.

The live broadcast will also feature these other segments:

• RegWatch: Stanley Nachimson, former CMS career professional-turned-well-known healthcare IT authority, will report on the latest regulatory news coming out of Washington, D.C.
  
  
• SOAP Note: Shannon DeConda, founder of the National Alliance of Medical Auditing Specialists and a partner of DoctorsManagement, will provide a long-awaited update to the legendary SOAP (subjective, objective, assessment, and plan) note.
  
  
• News Desk: Timothy Powell, compliance expert and ICD10monitor national correspondent, will anchor the Talk Ten Tuesdays News Desk.
  
  
• The Coding Report: Laurie Johnson, senior healthcare consultant for Revenue Cycle Solutions, LLC, will report on the latest ICD-10 codes.
  
  
• TalkBack: Erica Remer, MD, founder and president of Erica Remer, MD, Inc. and Talk-Ten-Tuesdays co-host, will report on another thought-provoking topic that has captured her attention.