Take advantage of the opportunity to have your work peer reviewed by experts in the field. If accepted, your abstract will be published in a special online supplement of Arthritis & Rheumatology and presented at the 2016 ACR/ARHP Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C., Nov. 11–16. All abstracts must be submitted online by noon ET on…
The American Board of Internal Medicine announced plans to offer a new Maintenance of Certification (MOC) assessment for internal medicine—and possibly other specialties—starting January 2018. Specific details are expected by Dec. 31, 2016, following a public comment period. The ACR will continue to push for access to clinical decision-making tools as an open-book, take-home assessment or for continuing medical education activities with assessment components to be considered appropriate options…
A 55-year-old female patient returns for her second infliximab infusion. Her temperature is 98°F, her height is 5’6″ and her weight is 151 lbs. She received 210 mg infliximab via infusion. The patient arrived at the clinic at 8:15 a.m. and left at 10:55 a.m. Can this encounter be coded correctly? Yes No A 38-year-old…
Take the challenge. B—No. Although the documentation states the patient arrived at the clinic at 8:15 a.m. and left the clinic at 10:55 a.m., it does not document the actual start and stop times of the infusion. According to CPT, when reporting codes for which infusion time is a factor, use the actual time over…
May is recognized as National Arthritis Awareness Month, a time to bring attention to the more than 46 million Americans living with arthritis and related inflammatory diseases. In honor of the occasion, the Rheumatology Research Foundation is launching #RheumLife, a social media campaign to bring awareness to the severity of rheumatic disease. Through Twitter and…
With many competing priorities facing physician practices, HIPAA compliance and security is not a topic that usually makes it to the top of the list. But this is not the case with the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights (OCR), because it has initiated a new phase of audits of physician…
On May 12, ACR leaders representing the Board of Directors, the Affiliate Societies Council and the Committees on Government Affairs and RheumPAC took the ACR’s policy message to Capitol Hill. There is power in numbers, so we hope you will participate in your own Virtual Hill Day by visiting Legislative Action Center and letting your…
On April 1, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced the beginning of the 45-day Open Payments Review and dispute period, which will conclude on May 15. After the review period concludes, on June 30, CMS will publish 2015 payment data along with updates to the 2013 and 2014 data. If you are…
Dramatic advancements in research toward prevention and cure are at risk, as federal research funding for rheumatic diseases has declined by 40% over the past five years. With that, an alarming number of rheumatologists are preparing for retirement. To stop this worrying trend, a strategic plan for the next five years was developed to complement…
“That’s a great case. Why don’t we write it up?” It’s a question I’ve heard many times throughout medical school, residency and fellowship. It’s typically intended to be more of a politely worded request than a rhetorical question. We must acknowledge that the process of writing, editing and submitting a case report is onerous, but it…