Hospital Medicine Has a Specialty Code. Is the Memo Still in the Mail?

J Hosp Med. 2020 Feb 1;15(2):91-93. doi: 10.12788/jhm.3303. Epub 2019 Sep 18.

Abstract

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services awarded Hospital Medicine a Medicare specialty code, "C6", in 2016. We examined the early uptake of C6 code using the 2017 Medicare Part B utilization data. We also compared the actual C6 specialty code usage against estimated rates of overall hospitalist billing using threshold-based hospitalist rates of Evaluation and Management codes to assess the integration of the newly introduced code. Billing activity associated with the C6 code was approximately one-tenth of expected rates.

Publication types

  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

MeSH terms

  • Aged
  • Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, U.S.
  • Current Procedural Terminology
  • Documentation / statistics & numerical data*
  • Hospital Medicine* / statistics & numerical data
  • Hospital Medicine* / trends
  • Humans
  • Insurance, Health, Reimbursement / statistics & numerical data
  • Medicare Part B* / statistics & numerical data
  • Medicare Part B* / trends
  • United States