This four hour workshop is designed to help both those who are new to anesthesia as well as those who need a brush up course for their everyday work situations . such as anesthesia time, qualifying circumstances, medical direction and invasive lines. Kelly will discuss the many aspects of coding and documentation requirements for anesthesia billing.

• You will walk away with an understanding of how anesthesia time is calculated, including rounding of time and/or units.
• Understanding the "Seven Steps" of medical direction and why it is important to know what each state carrier expects.
• Learn about qualifying circumstances and why your Medicare carrier may be asking you to report.
• Discuss HCPCS modifiers and how these can affect payment and your compliance plan.
• Determine which invasive monitoring procedures are separately billable and why you don't usually bill time for these procedures.

Get the scoop on the long awaited regulatory changes for teaching physicians, significant anesthesia crosswalk revisions, how 'never events' will affect anesthesia providers, any updated 'statements' from the ASA annual meeting and more during this 2010 update session.

Presenter: Joanne Mehmert, CPC

Have you ever wondered how to begin an internal auditing process? If your practice has a compliance plan, it may already outline the expectations – are you fulfilling them or are you non-compliant? This one-hour session will help you determine whether you should do in-house or outsource auditing - or mix it up. We will discuss where and how to start, where to focus your audits, how many charts should you audit, how often should you audit and more.

Did you learn how to code by being handed a diagnosis book and a stack of charges? Have you already started to get denials for your claims by reporting ICD-9 codes that have been deleted for 2010 - and it isn’t even 2010 yet? Join us for a review of diagnosis coding for anesthesia services, including pertinent new, modified and deleted diagnosis codes. We'll also discuss ICD-10 implementation.

Missing spinal instrumentation clues when billing is one of the most common coding errors! In this session, we'll discuss spinal coding terms, acronyms and anatomy and how these relate to anesthesia coding. We'll also discuss instrumentation versus fusion and find out which procedures may be considered experimental.

Not every person is suited for collection work. This session will include a discussion of the traits that make a good collector as well as the tools that your anesthesia collection staff requires to do the job effectively. Joanne will discuss prompt payment laws and provisions in your contractual agreements that provider staff can employ to assist in appealing claims. A denial is not always the final answer; the presenter will clarify various terms that third party payers use when payment is zero.

Were you one of those practices who started receiving denials for services provided with blocks after the 2nd Quarter CCI edits were published this year? Do you realize you must resubmit claims that were denied! Join us for a discussion of the National Correct Coding Initiative edits & CMS Transmittals and leave with an understanding of why providers need to be proactive!

You are not alone! In this session, we will discuss FAQs and answers from list serves. This is also an opportunity to discuss your specific practice problems.

We will discuss some of the issues that no one wants to talk about - what to do when the CRNA goes home and the anesthesiologist personally performs the rest of the case - can you bill anesthesia time when the anesthesia provider attends the patient while waiting for a bed in PACU and time when the anesthesia provider leaves the room while a patient is on pump. That isn't all, either, we will talk about your contractual agreements with third party payers, what is missing and how you should request information. We will discuss how to report anesthesia when the surgical procedure is reported using a Category III code that may not covered. Tips for billing split cases such as cosmetic and therapeutic procedures during the same surgical encounter, cancelled cases, worker's compensation issues for anesthesia, moderate sedation vs MAC anesthesia.

If you aren’t effectively collecting from patients and payers, your physician is working basically for free. Practice income directly relates to how successful your collections efforts are. Learn everything you need to know to keep the money flowing in this comprehensive workshop. We’ll cover both patient collections and payer collections. Bonus: Our expert will give you sample collections scenarios you can use to train everyone in your office and increase your collections rates.

Sure, working appeals is a good idea. But with few staff, heavy workloads, and little spare time, can you really find time for this work? Our appeals expert will tell you why you can’t afford not to follow up on claims denials, while teaching you to work smarter, not harder on getting payment faster with fewer snags.