Eyeing the future: E/M will disrupt, the PHE will end, telehealth will stay

Part B News editors scanned the health care landscape to come and interviewed experts to arrive at nine predictions of events and trends that will affect medical practices in 2021. (Note: see www.partbnews.com for four bonus predictions.)

Prediction: The E/M guideline revisions for office visit codes will sow confusion — with the use of time and with the “complexity of data” portion of medical decision-making (MDM).

The comprehensive updates to E/M office visit documentation guidelines, which go live Jan. 1, have been years in the making. After CMS fired a salvo in the 2018 rulemaking period, announcing it would wrap different levels of E/M codes into a single payment rate, the AMA responded in April 2019 with an alternate solution that included a new MDM table and revised time elements.