Action Alerts

Is Your Charge Description Master Current?
April 2007

As you are aware, each year there are HCPCS/CPT coding changes. In addition payers may make changes to their billing rules. Many of these changes affect the department/hospital’s charge description master (CDM). These changes must be disseminated to each department affected so the changes are implemented accurately on January 1 of each year.

In a recent article, the U.S. Attorney’s Office of Western New York investigated infusion billing and found the billing issues were actually related to an outdated CDM.

Another issue often identified is the billing of drugs. Medicare requires that units of service reported on the claim correspond to the long description of HCPCS codes for drugs, biologicals and radiopharmaceuticals and they must be reported consistently with that given to the patient.

Is your CDM current? Let QMCG help. Contact us at cnutt@qmcg.com or (614) 227-4852.