2021 E/M Guidelines

In anticipation of the 2021 E/M Outpatient Guidelines we’ve been busy reviewing the new rules and listening to expert auditors. As we all become familiar with the new guidelines , we also understand the need to explore real life applications.

Our goal in this blog series is to provide a forum regarding topics around the upcoming 2021 E/M Guidelines, to encourage community conversation on how the new guidelines might be applied. We’ll provide scenarios and expert opinion for your consideration, and we hope you’ll feel free to contribute to the thoughts and ideas presented by fellow auditors, coders, billers, CDI professionals, compliance professionals, payment integrity and risk managers.

To give a taste of what’s to come, the topics we plan to cover over the course of the next several weeks include:

• Data To Be Reviewed > Category 1 items
• Using Time to determine an Outpatient E/M code
• Documenting medical necessity
• Documenting problems
• Documenting the E/M Outpatient visit

There are many excellent presenters and experts providing training on these topics. Our goal is to highlight the “nuances” in implementing the 2021 E/M Guidelines. In these conversations, we hope to bring out potential scenarios before they become serious issues.

We hope you’ll join the conversation as we all navigate how the new Guidelines impact coding, billing, and risk. Let’s get started.

Swift Connect – Professional Profiles

Swiftaudit is proud to bring you FREE Professional Profiles! Show recruiters and hiring entities just how awesome you are.

• Add professional certifications, skills, and job preferences
• Share a link to your profile
• Hide your profile anytime you don’t feel like being contacted for work

Public mode

You are in control. You can set your Profile to Public mode to be open to the hiring organizations in our system. Public does NOT mean open to the internet. Recruiters and hiring organizations must be registered in our system to search for great candidates like you.

Private mode

Or, you can set your Profile to Private mode. Recruiters will NOT find your Profile, but you can send your personal link to any project.

Why use Swift Connect ?

• Unlike other general job sites, recruiters can search for your specific skills. We are focused on healthcare only.
• You can send a “snapshot” of your skills to interested parties. Your skills are front and center.

Whether you use Swift Connect in Public or Private mode, you are always in control of who you choose to communicate with. Your privacy is protected with the same security used to safeguard all of our Swiftaudit customers.

And did we mention, it’s FREE? To set up your own Profile all you have to do is create a free Swiftaudit account and we’ll get you started.

Free Professional Profile

Swift Learn – Webinars

Welcome to our webinar registration page! On this page, you will find free recorded webinars and live interactive sessions. Our presenters will be speaking on topics relevant to your coding, auditing, and the management of your practice. Bookmark this page and visit often to see what new topics are being offered.

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LIVE INTERACTIVE SESSIONS

How can I improve our 2021 E/M Outpatient coding?

Register for our working session “Bring your encounter to an expert”. This is a live interactive working session with one of our coding and auditing experts to review your questions about the 2021 E/M Guidelines.

• How can I best apply the new guidelines for my providers?
• What are simple ways to improve the documentation?
• How should I “count” certain tests?

Learn the nuances in documentation and coding to consider, and how you can educate your provider. This interactive working session is limited to the first 25 registrants.

We will choose redacted encounters to review from the first 5 registrants. All registrants can submit questions for the session. Seating is limited. Sign up soon.

Thursday, February 4, 2021 at noon (12:00 pm) EST   Presenter: Jill M. Young, CEMA, CPC, CEDC, CIMC

REGISTER

RECORDED WEBINARS

Each session is presented by an industry thought leader with over 25 years of experience in revenue cycle and coding/billing. Our speakers are highly regarded, certified and are often asked to speak at regional and national conferences.

What’s changing in 2021 for Evaluation & Management codes?

Presented November 19, 2020 Presenter: Barbara J. Cobuzzi MBA, CPC, CENTC, COC CPC-P, CPC-I, CPCO, CMCS	Free	View
Presented December 2, 2020   Presenter: Leslie Johnson, CPC	Free	View

Meet our Experts

Barbara J. Cobuzzi

MBA, CPC, CENTC, COC, CPC-P, CPC-I, CPCO, CMCS

Barbara is a dynamic speaker and educator. Barbara speaks at many local and national organizations.

Barbara founded CRN Healthcare Solutions which offers provider consulting services. As an expert witness, Barbara provides litigation support for providers and payers.

She is also the Consulting Editor of Otolaryngology Coding Alert. In the past, Barbara was a member of the AAPC National Advisory Board and their Executive Board.

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Leslie Johnson, CPC

Leslie will help you understand the impact of coding compliance to you and your providers.

Leslie is one of the founders of Jobs for American Medical Coders (JFAMC).
For over 15 years, Leslie has been a speaker at national and local conferences for groups such as local AAPC chapters, Decision Health’s Advance Specialty Coding Symposium and The Coding Institute’s CodingCon national coding conferences. Her coding articles have been published in Becker’s Online Review, BC Magazine and Find-a-Code.

She is a subject matter expert in Anesthesia and Pain Management, Orthopedics and general medical billing and coding topics.

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Jill Young

CEMA, CPC, CEDC, CIMC

Jill is a knowledgeble speaker and educator, who breaks down the “fine print” of coding compliance.

Jill has over 40 years of medical experience working in all areas of the medical practice including clinical, billing and rounding with physicians. Her background gives her a unique style of teaching using real life examples of coding and billing situations.

Her comments and opinions can be seen in several publications and heard on a variety of audio-conferences.

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(Lots of) Lists

The Good Ideas department thought it might be great if we came up with a way for our auditors and coders to track, well, anything they wanted to. Wouldn’t it be helpful to have an ongoing record of Provider and Practice assessments, Encounter requirements or general quality check items?

So we designed a nifty system of flexible lists and sent the spec off to our Get It Done department. And they did it! We’re excited to announce the addition of Audit Lists to our collection of time-saving auditor tools.

Step 1) Create a List

To create a new list, go to the Audit Lists option on the main menu.

You can add a new, custom list by clicking on the + sign.

Build your list with checklist items and dropdowns. You write the text and provide the options and answers. Questions can be weighted and lists are scored. And don’t forget to give it a fabulous title!

Step 2) Assign the List

You can assign lists to Providers, Practices or Encounters.

Provider / Practice Lists:

Encounter Lists:

Once you reach the Assign Lists screen, you can add or delete as many lists as you’d like. Assign the same list with a new date stamp to track answers over time. This could be a real game changer when you need to keep an eye on quality control or add a customized list of questions to your Encounters.

You can even share lists with your favorite auditor or coder by downloading them using the Bulk Actions menu in the upper right corner of the Audit Lists: Templates screen. Easy!

To get you started we’d love to send you the checklists for Split/Shared Visits and Incident To Visits. Click on this List Link and save the file on your system. Go to the Audit Lists screen and click on the Upload option under Bulk Actions in the upper right corner. Voila! Your first lists have been created!

We hope you’ll give our new List feature a try and tell us what you think. And once you get rolling we’d love to hear your creative ideas on how you’re using Lists. Sharing great ideas with our community of auditors and coders helps to make us all more efficient and successful!