As the field of palliative care continues to evolve, understanding community-based palliative care fee-for-service (FFS) billing is critical. Our health care reimbursement system is moving to one paying for quality outcomes and value, yet FFS medicine remains alive and well. To assist community-based palliative care programs in maximizing their program revenue and to support quality payment reporting, CHCF sponsored a webinar and development of a companion fee-for-service billing handbook, Documentation and Coding Handbook: Palliative Care (PDF).

These resources describe traditional palliative care physician and non-physician practitioner payable services — evaluation and management services — and provide information on nontraditional services and recent changes the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services have proposed, such as “virtual visits,” the medical necessity of home visits, and blended evaluation and management payments.

These materials were developed by Jean Acevedo, president and senior consultant at Acevedo Consulting. Acevedo is a compliance consultant known nationally for her deep knowledge of hospice and palliative care physician services billing.