HCFA listens up on E/M guidelines
The guidelines for using evaluation and management codes for Medicare reimbursement were "too flawed to be fixed," said (then) AAFP President Neil Brooks, M.D., of Rockville, Conn., in March.
The federal government listened.
The (then) American College of Physicians, as well as the AAFP, called for an overhaul of the E/M guidelines.
By now, HCFA has worked with the medical community to propose a new framework for the guidelines. Ninety-one percent of 80 AAFP members who reviewed the new document in November found it better than the 1997 guidelines. Seventy-one percent had a favorable impression of the revised guidelines. But concerns continued that the guidelines were still too intrusive and insufficiently related to patient care.
This month, a Current Procedural Terminology Editorial Panel work group, including AAFP Past President Douglas Henley, M.D., of Fayetteville, N.C., will meet with HCFA staff to study specialty society comments. The work group will propose revisions to the full CPT Editorial Panel in February. Its recommendations will form the basis for HCFA's pilot testing later this year.
The new guidelines are expected to be implemented no earlier than a year from now, after education of physicians and Medicare carriers.
FP Report is published by the AAFP News Department. Copyright © 1999 by American Academy of Family Physicians.
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