Physicians News Health news for doctors and patients.

The government has begun to focus on patient care (or lack thereof) as a compliance issue. Can the government really mean to put itself in the minds of clinicians?

An efficient e-billing process leads to a faster reimbursement turnaround, as it reduces billing errors, increases claim submission throughput, and improves claim acceptance rates.

With the finalization of the joint venture safe harbors and greater certainty in the Office of Inspector General’s position regarding joint ventures, there has been a revival of physician-hospital ventures.

A defined benefit plan will be attractive to a physician practice in which the physician is moderately close to retirement and has experienced a longer period of service, particularly in those cases in which the other participants are not close to retirement and have not experienced longer periods of service.

We must all continue to follow the biannual updates to the ICD-9-CM, remembering that there is no grace period for implementation.

The OIG issued a draft Supplemental Compliance Program Guidance for the Hospital Industry, detailing additional requirements for hospitals and providing significant additional guidelines that directly affect physicians’ relationships with hospitals.

The failure this summer to achieve an anticipated victory on the caps bill may have indeed invoked sullen disengagement from politics by many physicians, while igniting anger and renewed resolve in others.

Far too many physicians sell their business and investment property and pay capital gain taxes because they are unaware of provisions in the tax code that allow for deferral.

COBRA provides certain former employees, retirees, spouses, former spouses, and dependent children the right to temporary continuation of health coverage at group rates. However, it is only available when coverage is lost due to specific qualifying events.

How physicians are paid in relationship to others in their practice can range from a "purely equal" approach that pays all "full partners" the same amount of compensation, to the other extreme of paying compensation purely on the basis of relative productivity. There are pros and cons to either approach.