Dr. Burd's Quick and Simple Guide to the New CPT codes for 2013

CPT Coding Changes for 2013 with E/M Discussion from American Psychiatric Association on Vimeo.


Worried about the new CPT codes?  I'm sure this will make it crystal clear.  Piece of cake. 

I'd also like to borrow a quote from the New York Times by Leora Horowitz from "A Shortcut to Wasted Time":

Doctors are paid not by how much time they spend with patients, how well they listen or how hard they think about what could be wrong, but by how much they write down. And the rules for what we have to write are Byzantine: Medicare’s explanation takes 87 pages. To receive the highest level of payment for an office visit, I have to document several aspects of the main problem, screening questions about at least 10 organ systems, something about the patient’s family and/or social history, and/or a lengthy physical exam. In addition, I have to demonstrate that my medical decision making was very complicated, considering the number of possible diagnoses and treatments, the complexity of the data and/or the patient’s risk of serious complications. That type of visit is supposed to take about 40 minutes.

Last week, I spent 40 minutes with a patient who had just placed her mother into hospice care. My patient was distraught, not sleeping, not eating. I gave her some advice, but mostly I just listened. By the end of our visit, she was feeling much better. But I wouldn’t be able to bill much for that visit based on my documentation: I didn’t review her medical or family history, conduct a review of organ systems or perform a physical exam.

What the payment system tells me to do is to cut her off after 10 minutes, listen to her heart and lungs and give her a sleeping pill. Which doctor visit would you prefer?