In my years of coding for rheumatology, I am often asked this type of question: “I have a patient who recently came in for a visit. She had two or three diagnoses, was placed on three or four different medications, and we ran one or two labs on her. Does this qualify for a level-four visit?”
Coding Corner Answer
October’s Coding Answer
Bridge Funding Award Keeps Researcher on the Path to Her Passion
On June 25, 2008, the American College of Rheumatology Research and Education Foundation received a letter from Sujata Sarkar, MD, one of the first recipients of the ACR REF/Arthritis Foundation Bridge Funding Award. In that letter Dr. Sarkar wrote, “I am very thankful to you … This award has come to me at a very crucial and vulnerable time in my academic career as a junior researcher.” The crucial and vulnerable time to which Dr. Sarkar refers is the time when she would need to search for alternative funding to pay for her rheumatology research career—or leave academia altogether.
An American in Paris
Visiting a historical city inspires reflections on the history and progress of rheumatology
REF and AF Partner to Provide an Additional “Bridge Funding”
Fostering promising investigators is imperative to the future of rheumatology, so when the ACR Research and Education Foundation (REF) board of directors discovered that outstanding applicants were not being funded through the National Institutes of Health (NIH) K-series grant program (the NIH’s career development award program) due to budgetary constraints, the REF quickly called a meeting with the Arthritis Foundation (AF) and the NIH to discuss a solution.
Help Find a Cure for RA
The ACR REF established the Within Our Reach: Finding a Cure for Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) campaign in 2006 with one goal in mind: to find a cure for RA.
ACR Publishes New Guide for RA Care
Updated guidelines synthesize and formalize recommendations for DMARD use
Th 17 Cells and Arthritis
The true story of how IL-17 became a focus for RA research
Rethink Rheumatoid Arthritis Research
Are there genetic indicators that can help rheumatologists identify the people who are at risk for developing the disease? Are there environmental factors that trigger rheumatoid arthritis (RA)? Simply put, what causes RA and how do we treat and cure it?
Rheumatoid Arthritis: Time Is of the Essence
Early treatment lessens arthritis pain and disability, but challenges to early detection remain