In the payment and practice management domain, end-of-year articles often offer predictions for the upcoming year. I will admit that I am very glad that I did not attempt to do that in the December 2019 Payment and Practice Management column! That column covered CPT® code changes for 2020 and a reminder that use of the new Medicare Beneficiary Identifier (MBI) was going to be required for claims and most other transaction in 2020.
In my April 2020 column, I described some of the issues we could expect to see from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) in its proposed rule for the 2021 fee schedule. Concerns then centered around whether CMS would propose elimination of the surgical global period and the budget neutrality implications of the increased values for office and outpatient evaluation and management (E/M) services. The latter took on greater urgency and significance once...
