VIDEO: E/M code changes allow physicians to ‘focus on the patient’

Brian Outland, PhD, director of regulatory affairs at ACP, discussed the recent changes in evaluation and management, or E/M, codes, during the organization’s Internal Medicine Meeting.

These changes, he said, are the most significant documentation and coding changes that have occurred in more than 20 years.

“The way documentation is done during 2021 has been simplified greatly,” Outland said.

When billing for Medicare patients, physicians are no longer required to document a patient’s history or physical exam to determine the appropriate level of E/M coding, according to Outland.

“A physician can choose the information that he or she deems necessary for the patient visit, and then they can select their visit based on time or medical decision making,” Outland said.

The new changes allow physicians to “focus on the patient and the visit that is being done” instead of thinking about whether additional information is needed to support the code, he said.