IQ Education
2021 Evaluation & Management (E/M) guideline changes
Providing clear, concise education webinars for office visit coding changes effective January 1, 2021
What you need to know!
Clear, concise E/M education
Our IQ Education Team works hard to make sure your team understands the big changes made for outpatient E/M codes and guidelines for office visits that went into effect in January 2021. Our experienced experts analyzed every detail of the guidelines and broke it down to what you need to know.
Intellis E/M education advantages:
- We empower your team with clear, concise, FREE webinars.
- Our E/M education webinars are offered on-demand, so team members can choose times that work best for them.
- Our webinars are tailored to meet specific needs.
- One webinar is designed for providers.
- One webinar is geared toward coders and auditors and is AAPC-approved for 1 CEU.
- Our E/M education is presented by our Director of Education Jeanie Heck, BBA, CCS, CPC, CRC
Train your entire team
Two FREE webinars
Take this course: Coder/Auditor Webinar
Coder/Auditor presentation webinar covers the following topics:
- Interesting Facts
- Brief History & Summary of Changes
- Concept of Medical Necessity
- Organization of E/M Guidelines
- Summary of E/M Guideline Differences
- Review of Time & Medical Decision Making and how to use the new MDM table
- 22 New E/M MDM Definitions found in the Guidelines
- New prolonged services code and proposed G code
- Case study examples
Take this course: Provider Webinar
Provider presentation focuses on some of the above and also the change in RVUs and guidance for proper, complete, and compliant documentation
E&M Code and Guideline Change Insights:
- The revision of codes & guidelines for outpatient new & established patients is the first major revamp in over 25 years
- The AMA has indicated the upcoming E/M changes to new & established office visits are similar to the massive conversion from ICD-9 to ICD-10
- The affected E/M codes account for approximately 25% of total spending for physician services under CMS/Medicare Part B and approximately 50% of all E/M expenditures — they also have a similar impact on commercial carrier payments
- These codes are used by physicians and other health care professionals in nearly EVERY specialty for the reporting of office and other outpatient visits
- The upcoming changes effective 1/1/2021 are expected to provide an increase in physician productivity & and a decrease in its associated documentation burden or “note bloat”
- From a coding standpoint, clarity should be improved — the new 2021 changes are eliminating the elements of history & exam to be used in the calculation of the level of service; the level of service will now be determined by either TIME or Medical Decision Making – most commonly known as MDM.
- Changes ONLY affect office/other outpatient services E/M codes 99202-99215 (99201 has been deleted). All other E/M encounters (hospital visits, ED visits, SNF visits, & home visits will NOT be affected
- Even though RVUs for new and established patients are going up, the proposed conversion factor is going down for the calculation of RVUs! The result is that reimbursement changes for the affected office visit codes may be uneven