Hot off the press! Eliminating consult code payments for 2010: Symposium Briefing

While attending the AMA Symposium this week there was a HUGE uproar about eliminating payments for consults.  I thought one physician was going to take the head off of the guy from CMS!  Whoa baby, talk about hot!  Then you have the coders who are gunning for bear.  The AMA left the CPT consult codes in for 2010 but CMS says they won’t pay!  In light of this, the attending physicians are going to have to bill the initial hospital care day with a modifier.  Then the consultants come along and they have to use the