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Last month, the CDC reported that 90 percent of our annual $4.5 trillion in healthcare spending is devoted to people with chronic and mental health conditions. And we know that 70 percent of Medicare beneficiaries, for example, suffer from two or more chronic conditions. These are staggering numbers we can’t turn away from, and a daunting challenge for physicians trying to improve outcomes and build a sustainable practice. Same for group practices and IDNs all the way to large hospital systems. We’ve also seen the studies showing that patient costs without coordinated care are 75 percent higher than when care coordination is implemented.
In my last article, it was detailed how CMS has finally allowed concurrent reimbursement (same patient/same month) for patients in chronic care management and remote physiologic or remote therapeutic management, billing for the care management (read care coordination) codes. For CCM this means complex and non-complex, behavioral health integration (speaking of mental health), principal care management, transition and the new chronic pain management codes.