Every successful man I have heard of has done the best he could with conditions as he found them, and not waited until the next year for better. In the business world of medicine, physicians understand that you are only financially compensated as well as you are willing to accurately code your services.
Family medicine is certainly no different than other medical specialties.
In the March issue of The Ohio Family Physician, Fred Jorgensen MD and Jean Kouris CPC presented an excellent overview of commonly used procedural codes for family physicians. I suspect that all of us have acquired a fairly good understanding of the importance of proper Evaluation and Management coding. However, I have an uneasy feeling about whether family physicians are willing to utilize these codes or provide necessary documentation to support the level of coding being used. This month, I would like to share with you a recent experience I had with a large health insurance carrier doing business in Ohio that raised my concern over this issue. The MCO perceived a marked disparity among family physicians coding practices.