Update Your HIPAA Program Compliance Before April 5th for the Implementation of the 21st Century Cures Act. Dr Fucinari's HIPAA for the Chiropractic Profession now includes information on what your office needs to do to provide electronic records access to patients. 

An audit by any entity is never pleasant. Some audits are just spot checks by a provider. Other audits can spell trouble. Recently, a client of mine contacted me “just to make sure” that the requested records were not anything to be worried about. Make no mistake, a 40-chart audit is never a spot check. Do you know the players in an audit?

Recently, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) once again clarified the Qualified Medicare Beneficiary (QMB) billing requirements. Even if you are not a provider for Medicaid or covered services under Medicare are not covered by Medicaid in your state, you must still adhere to the billing requirements.

Just before the close of 2018, and in an unusual unanimous decision by the Florida Supreme Court, the long issue of contention in how a PIP insurer should apply the deductible to medical bills was finally decided in favor of the providers.

I am often asked if a chiropractor can refuse to treat a Medicare patient. This poses not only a legal question but an ethical question as well.

Medical Compliance updates for 2019 so far. It is recommended that every employee undergo update training on Compliance and HIPAA as mandated by law. I am scheduled to teach in several locations in the first quarter of the year. Please take a look at the Course Schedule, including the January Health Care Updates Course in Illinois.

The Illinois Chiropractic Society (ICS) has been working with the American Medical Association (AMA) in 2018 to clarify problematic language published in 2007 in the CPT® Assistant. The ICS noted that the 2007 guidance was overly inclusive in the number and types of services bundled as part of chiropractic manipulative treatment (CMT). We are happy to report that the AMA has recently revised this language to remove from the CMT narrative some of the elements that are more appropriately characterized as part of a patient re-evaluation.

As I have been talking about in my classes: Legislation championed by ACA to expand Medicare coverage of services has been introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives. The bill, H.R. 7157, introduced on Nov. 16, would allow Medicare beneficiaries to access the chiropractic profession’s broad-based, non-drug approach to pain management, which includes manual manipulation of the spine and extremities, joint mobilization, soft-tissue massage techniques, physiological therapies, exercise instruction, and activity advice. The bill adds no new services; it only allows access to those current Medicare benefits that chiropractors are licensed to provide.

A bill introduced today in the U.S. Senate and supported by the American Chiropractic Association (ACA) would expand access to chiropractic services to military retirees as well as members of the National Guard and Reserve through the Department of Defense TRICARE health program. The legislation, known as "The Chiropractic Health Parity for Military Beneficiaries Act," introduced by Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) and Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), would not only enable those who currently receive chiropractic care to continue their treatment, but would also establish, in the wake of the nationwide opioid crisis, an important non-drug option for pain management in the TRICARE program.

Quarter 3, 2018 Coding Clinic addressed the coding of lumbar spondylolisthesis with radiculopathy.