Mark your calendar! Workshop expanded to 2 days.....

Don’t miss this Hands-on workshop with the nationally renowned medical coding expert, Barbara Pierce, CCS-P, ACS-EM. This workshop is of great importance now more than ever because of the new stricter laws the government has recently passed in order to crack down on the many billing and documentation errors which occur in the health care field every day. Plus to get paid for the work you do, you need to document your billing correctly. When undercoding errors occur, it means you will get paid less than you should. When you commit an overcoding error, this can be classified as fraud if done intentionally, and that is a serious matter. Billions of dollars worth of coding errors occur and a government crackdown is ongoing to recapture lost revenue. It is time for all health care providers to update their billing and coding knowledge so that they are able to document correctly.

The 2nd Annual Coding workshop will be held on
Friday and Saturday, April, 29th and 30th 2011 at
the J.C. Penney Conference Center at UMSL
1 University Blvd. St. Louis, MO 63121

Speaker: Mrs. Barbara Pierce, CCS-P, ACS-EM

Barbara Pierce is a national speaker who has extensive knowledge in the area of coding and billing. Her strength is in CPT and ICD-9 coding as it is applied in medical practice. She is often asked to perform compliance audits and evaluations for practices and clinics of various specialties. Barb has worked with a variety of clients performing medical record reviews and education. As a presenter for ongoing chart auditing workshops sponsored by Decisional Health, she has become a nationally recognized speaker on the CMS/AMA documentation Guidelines. Barb developed the ACS-EM certification exam and study guide for the Board of Medical Specialty Coding, for which she leads the E/M Advisory Board.

“This was very valuable information that I wish I had years ago. While in school or when starting my first NP job. In our profession, learning our value and working for that is priceless. This information will earn me the money and credit I deserve.” - Kayla, Oct 2010

Accommodations & Location

Workshop Agenda and Objectives:

Background Information, News and Facts...

The background data for this workshop is derived from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). This data provides additional evidence to support the purpose of this workshop. According to the medical records reviewed by CMS, providers overcoded by submitting documentation that supported a lower code, resulting in overpayment for services. In contrast, other providers submitted documentation that supported a higher code than the code submitted, resulting in undercoding and underpayment for services. In both cases, incorrect coding was a major category of errors associated with overpayments and underpayments. The data from the 2009 fee-for-service report showed that 7.5% (23 billion dollars) of the claims were due to overpayments and 0.4% (1.1 billion dollars) was due to underpayments. The total overpayment plus underpayments accounted for 7.8% (0.1 billion dollars). These figures are significantly higher than the previous year’s error rate of 3.6% (10.4 billion dollars) because of stricter adherence to the requirements for documentation. 1

In order to improve compliance and reduce improper payments to providers, the Medicare program has revised its 2010 targets and will implement a process that will result in stricter enforcement and adherence to its policies. In addition, corrective actions are in place to reduce the number of documentation errors.

1 Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. (2009). Improper Medicare fee-for-service payments report – November 2009 report.

Register NOW! for the 2011 Workshop!