As of January 1, 2015, Medicare began paying physicians for Chronic Care Management Services under CPT code 99490. This new payment offers physicians the opportunity to be compensated for non-face-to-face care management with Medicare patients that have multiple chronic conditions. The CCM payment allowance is approximately $42 per month per patient, subject to customary Medicare beneficiary cost sharing.
In response to the 2015 Medicare rule changes, AAFP released a toolkit designed for physicians to successfully bill and receive payment for Chronic Care Management Services. The toolkit covers key elements of the new rule, such as patient eligibility, practice standards, scope of services, coding, billing, documentation, and CCM “incident to” rules. The toolkit also provides downloadable tools designed to assist physicians with implementation of CCM services, such as patient care plans, patient letters and agreements, and service logs for tracking clinical time devoted to care management services. AAFP’s senior strategist for physician payment, Kent Moore, presented the need-to-know information on how to get started with billing for Chronic Care Management services in “Getting Paid for Chronic Care Management Under Medicare in 2015.” To read more and view the archived webinar, click here.
The Chronic Care Management Toolkit is available at no cost for AAFP members and can be found here: http://www.aafp.org/practice-management/payment/coding/ccm.html. Please note: Access to the full toolkit requires AAFP member sign in.