Elsewhere, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services sets a new date for doctors to adopt a new coding practice and Medicare may follow advice against giving smokers annual CT scans.
Kaiser Health News: Doctors Think Others Often Prescribe Unnecessary Care
Three out of four physicians believe that fellow doctors prescribe an unnecessary test or procedure at least once a week, a survey released Thursday finds. The most frequent reasons that physicians order extraneous — and costly — medical care are fears of being sued, impulses to be extra careful and desires to reassure their own assessments of the patient, the survey said (Rau, 5/1).
Modern Healthcare:Â Physician Anxieties Linger As CMS Sets Oct. 2015 Conversion Date For ICD-10
The countdown has restarted toward the compliance deadline with the federally mandated conversion to the ICD-10 diagnostic and procedural codes. The new ICD-10 start date is Oct. 1, 2015, according to a terse statement from the CMS (Conn, 5/1).