Although the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is simplifying documentation through its Patients over Paperwork initiative, clinical documentation improvement (CDI) did not go away. CDI is not about how to code in ICD-10-CM or the Current Procedural Terminology (CPT); instead, it is a huge part of the solution in maximizing the integrity of…
The patient medical history is far more prominent in clinical decisions for rheumatology than for many common chronic diseases in which a gold standard biomarker, such as blood pressure or serum glucose, is applicable to diagnosis and management of all individual patients.1 Components of a subjective patient history may be recorded as structured, quantitative, standard,…
Using virtual reality in rehabilitation can have benefits—as long as it is properly understood. In fact, some evidence suggests benefits from the judicious use of immersive virtual reality with patients with rheumatic diagnoses. People tend to have a lower perception of effort compared with actual exertion and lower reports of pain with longer time to exhaustion.
A recent study reveals the common misconceptions of primary care physicians about rheumatologic care, such as the difference between inflammatory and non-inflammatory arthropathy. Researchers believe such misconceptions can be targeted to improve patients’ timely access to care and diagnosis…
It’s time to prepare for 2019 MIPS reporting via the Rheumatology Informatics System for Effectiveness (RISE) registry, and the ACR is here to help. To ensure you’re ready to submit your data to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), RISE users should take the following steps: Review your data in the dashboard; Make…
Issues related to the costs and insurance coverage associated with rheumatologic care can be complex and overwhelming for patients. Here’s how one private practice addresses the financial side of treatment with its patients…
Insurance overpayments can occur in a practice for a variety of reasons. An insurer may simply make a mistake by paying a provider more than the contracted amount for a service or pay for a service that is not covered under the patient’s insurance plan. Whatever the reason, overpayments can and will create headaches for…
(Reuters)—Alphabet Inc.’s Google signed its biggest cloud computing customer in healthcare yet, according to an announcement on Monday, gaining with the deal datasets that could help it tune potentially lucrative artificial intelligence tools. The Wall Street Journal earlier reported Google teaming up with Ascension to collect personal health-related information of millions of Americans across 21…
A patient with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) asks if diet can help ease their symptoms. Or maybe a patient with severe knee osteoarthritis (OA) seeks diet advice because they want to lose weight and relieve pressure on their joints. Although there’s no specific nutrition plan for patients with rheumatic diseases, research has shown many dietary factors…
More than 72,000 Americans died from opioid overdoses in 2017, according to the National Institutes of Health.1 The impact of the opioid epidemic has affected many levels of patient care and, as a result, healthcare systems are responding to escalating death rates, new legislation and the possibility of compromised patient safety in a multitude of…