It is being estimated that these new regulations will promote improved room with the physicians to focus better on what is more important and clinically appropriate for their patients rather than having to apply their clinical judgment more towards the documentation requirements. Call us at Download FREE Whitepaper: 5 Proactive Strategies To Optimize Medical Coding Coming along with the reduction in documentation requirements will also be the changes in the coding and payment methodologies, all of which is set to eventually cut down the administrative burden for the busy offices of the physicians, allowing them more time for health care needs of their patients.
For instance, there may be several documentation policies that CMS is implementing in the upcoming year that should lessen the burden immediately. This series of changes starting in will rise to crescendo in , everything combined should reduce administrative burden for physicians to a large extent. Coders can continue using current coding methodology. CMS will continue to pay as per current payment structure.
Effective January 1st, Documentation of medical necessity justification will not be required for a home visit in lieu of an outpatient office visit. Re-documentation of the required elements will not be required in case of established patient evaluation and management outpatient office visit when relevant information is already documented in the medical record and the physician has reviewed and updated the prior information as necessary and noted it as such in the medical record for the current visit.
Physician can document only the changes or what has not changed since the last visit. When using Time to document the visit, physicians will need to document the medical necessity of the visit and the amount of time personally spent face-to-face with the patient. Implement a new system for time and effort reporting.
These tasks were rated as very time-consuming and ambiguous by PIs. Streamline human subjects protection-reporting by requiring only one Institutional Review Board IRB protocol for multi-state trials and by eliminating continuing review for minimal-risk protocols. Evaluate animal welfare reporting systems. The report says animal research regulations have "grown increasingly complex," with multiple levels of regulation.
For a larger discussion about this issue, see this recent article [pdf]. Do not implement the controversial, changed conflict-of-interest policies used by the Public Health Services in other federal agencies and evaluate the PHS policies themselves. Reevaluate safety and security requirements—some of which may be appropriate for industrial settings but not for academic labs.
Make audits more consistent and streamlined and consider requiring receipts and justification for large purchases only. Create a "permanent high level, inter-agency, inter-sector committee" that will "create a priority list of regulations and policies that should be eliminated, modified, or harmonized to reduce the administrative workload of PIs and institutions.
Form collaborations among institutions and government agencies so that model programs for IRB review, for example can be identified and disseminated to other institutions. Time will tell which of these suggestions actually are implemented and whether or not they are successful.
There is no question, however, that changes are needed. Given the current funding climate, it is likely that the administrative burden for PIs has climbed higher than the 42 percent reported in , the last time the survey was performed.
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