Devington Technologies: News

Empire Medicare Part B — New CPT Codes & Anesthesia Minutes Denials:

Some new CPT codes created after November 2002, such as 0020T - Extracorp shock wave tx, were loaded into Empire's Medicare's system with Anesthesia Minutes required, even though these emerging technology outpatient procedures don't require anesthesia. This error will cause electronic claims with such CPT codes to be denied. Empire Medicare is aware of this problem, and is working to correct it.

In the meantime, if you get an Anesthesia Minutes denial for a claim that has a new emerging technology CPT code, please resubmit the claim on paper.

Empire Medicare says that the invalid Anesthesia Minutes requirement for these CPT codes will be corrected by October 2003 at the latest. Once they have made their corrections, you can resume submitting these claims electronically.

Please call us at (212) 967-0601 if you have any questions about Empire Medicare EOB issues.

— Devington Technologies Ltd, August 1, 2003

Empire Medicare Part B — Patient Name Rules:

Stricter Patient Name Requirements for Electronic and Paper Claims: In October 2002, Empire announced tough new requirements for patients' names.   Patients' names must now be spelled exactly as on the patients' Medicare cards.

Medicare recommends making a copy of each patient's Medicare card, to be included in the patient's chart. This gives you a resource to go back to for the correct spelling, should you get a "NAME UNKNOWN" error on an EOB.

If a patient has a hyphenated or double last name, Medicare recommends that you remove any hyphen or space. The two names are placed together (no spaces).   For example, Mary Smith-Evans would become MARY SMITHEVANS. John Summner Weill would become JOHN SUMMNERWEILL.

If the patient has a very long last name, no worries.  Currently, Hippocrates III allows a maximum of 16 characters for a last name.   A patient's last name has more than 16 characters, the Empire eLink Help Desk says that as long as the first 16 characters are entered correctly, and exactly match the last name Empire has on file, the patient's claims will be honored.

Please call us at (212) 967-0601 if you have any questions about Empire Medicare EOB issues.

— Devington Technologies Ltd, April 11, 2003

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