Note from the speaker: Patient status and denials education at the 2018 Revenue Integrity Symposium

By Ralph Wuebker, MD, MBA

The healthcare revenue cycle is changing at break neck speed. Staying up to date on CMS regulations as well as overall payer trends is critical in this time. The National Association of Healthcare Revenue Integrity’s (NAHRI) 2018 Revenue Integrity Symposium (RIS) is one of the best conferences for unbiased education on essential healthcare revenue cycle and revenue integrity topics.

RIS will be held October 16–17 at the Wigwam Resort in Litchfield Park (Phoenix), Arizona. I grew up in the Phoenix area up until the eighth grade, so I’m looking forward to heading back there, and may even trace my old paper route!

What I’m most looking forward to at RIS is helping attendees learn about the recent IPPS change related to billing impact of the change to the physician order requirement as a condition of payment.

I’ll be speaking at two sessions during the event, the first of which I am presenting with Steven A. Greenspan, JD, LLM, vice president of regulatory affairs at Optum360. Our session is on managed care denials and begins at 8 a.m. on Wednesday, October 17. We are seeing a significant increase in denials from managed care plans and asking an attending physicians to help is not the solution. In fact, it will most often make the problem worse. I’ll also be speaking about the latest changes to inpatient and outpatient determinations alongside Kimberly A. H. Baker, JD, CPC, director of Medicare and compliance for HCPro, at 1:45 p.m. on Wednesday, October 17.

I hope to see you there.

Editor’s note: Wuebker is chief medical officer for Optum360 in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania. He is board-certified and currently serves as a member of EHR’s physician education and audit team. Wuebker regularly visits Optum360’s client hospitals to provide medical executives and staff members with ongoing education on a variety of topics, including Medicare and Medicaid compliance and regulations, medical necessity, Recovery Audit Contractors, utilization review, denials management, and length of stay.

For additional information, listen to a recording of our Revenue Integrity Symposium Demo and view the corresponding slides. Revenue integrity professionals wishing to earn support from program administrators to attend the 2018 Revenue Integrity Symposium may adapt our justification letter proposal.