96110 payment

Many of you are familiar with the 96110 RVU snafu at the beginning of 2012.  CMS removed all the RVUs for the 96110 and then, with the help of the AAP making noise, replaced the values.

Apparently, a number of  payers took this as an opportunity to stop paying on the 96110 altogether. Sigh.

I have some fascinating data about the after hours, etc., codes (9905x) coming, but I wanted to share these two followup tidbits before I forget:

• The Developmental Screening Toolkit For Primary Care Providers looks like an excellent site to add to the list I posted the other day. In particular, here's a great comparison chart of the more common screening tools, which includes costs, links, time it takes to complete, etc. As I've said before, why practices don't perform these services and bill for them is beyond me.
• Two more articles about personalized medicine, microcapitation, whatever we want to call it. The first is from northjersey.com and is the classic vignette-style article about docs dropping insurance. The second piece is from Medical Economics and, as one would expect, it offers more details about how a practice might go about dropping out of insurance. There are some insightful comments (for example, pointing out the challenges of dropping out one insurance company at a time vs. all-at-once), but their reference to a specific generic billing package is kinda' weird (why would they suggest people look at a billing system whose legal troubles are showcased on their own front page?). Any content about this subject with the "...skip the middleman.." in the title is good by me.

9905x coming next, I think. Interesting stuff.