Advocacy & Practice Updates — Advocacy & Practice
Reporting of Post-Operative Visits Required Beginning July 1
In response to strong objections from the ASRS, AAO and other medical specialties regarding lack of transparency in collapsing all global periods, CMS responded by proposing that post-operative care be reported in 10-minute increments for every surgical CPT code. In its comment letter to CMS, the ASRS, the AMA and others specialties advocated against such a burdensome data collection requirement.
In the 2017 Physician Fee Schedule Final Rule, CMS scaled back its methodology for gathering the data needed to better value these codes. Practitioners in 9 states (FL, KY, LA, NV, NJ, ND, OH, OR, and RI) with 10 or more practitioners are required to report on post-operative visits furnished during global periods using CPT code 99024. The data collection effort began with voluntary reporting on January 1, 2017. Mandatory reporting will begin July 1. Participants will only be required to report on services that are:
- Reported annually by more than 100 practitioners;
- Reported more than 10,000 times; or
- Annually exceed $10 million in allowed charges.
The complete list of codes for which such reporting is required beginning July 1, 2017 can be downloaded from the CMS website. Based on ASRS analysis, retina specialists meeting the above criteria should plan to report on the following codes:
67036
67040
67041
67042
67108
67113
67145
67210
67228
(Published Jan. 11, 2017)