In April 2011, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will release its fifth national provider Comparative Billing Report (CBR). The purpose of this CBR is to inform podiatric providers of billing information for selected services billed to Medicare and to help prevent improper payments. The data in this report illustrates peer comparisons of debridement codes billed, Evaluation and Management (E/M) high level code use, and the number of patients billed per day in both the office and Skilled Nursing Facility settings. The CBRs will be released to approximately 5000 podiatry providers nationwide.
The CBRs, produced by SafeGuard Services under contract with CMS, provide comparative data on how an individual healthcare provider compares to other providers by looking at utilization patterns for services, beneficiaries, and diagnoses billed. CMS has received feedback from a number of providers that this kind of data is very helpful to them and encouraged us to produce more CBRs and make them available to providers. These reports are not available to anyone but the provider who receives them. To ensure privacy, CMS presents only summary billing information. No patient- or case-specific data is included. These reports are an example of a tool that helps providers comply with Medicare billing rules and improve the level of care they furnish to their Medicare patients. For more information and to review a sample of the Podiatry CBR, please visit the CBR Services website at www.CBRServices.com<http://www.cbrservices.com/> or call the SafeGuard Services' Provider Help Desk, CBR Support Team at 530-896-7080. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Note: If you have problems accessing any hyperlink in this message, please copy and paste the URL into your Internet browser. If you know someone who would like to subscribe to a Medicare Fee-For-Service (FFS) provider listserv, go to (http://www.cms.gov/prospmedicarefeesvcpmtgen/downloads/Provider_Listservs.pdf). If you would like to unsubscribe from a specific provider listserv, please go to (https://list.nih.gov/cgi-bin/wa.exe?INDEX) to unsubscribe or to leave the appropriate listserv. Please DO NOT respond to this email. This email is a service of CMS and routed through an electronic mail server to communicate Medicare policy and operational changes and/or updates. Responses to this email are not routed to CMS personnel. Inquiries may be sent by going to (http://www.cms.gov/ContactCMS). Thank you.
