Dan Ciolek
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) recently released MLN Matters Article
MM10163 titled “October Quarterly Update to 2017 Annual Update of HCPCS Codes Used for SNF CB Enforcement. CMS indicates that Change Request
(CR) 10163 provides updates to the lists of Healthcare Common Procedure Coding System (HCPCS) codes that are subject to the Consolidated Billing (CB) provision of the SNF Prospective Payment System (PPS). The CR corrects an error impacting certain claims with dates of service on or after January 1, 2015, that Medicare mistakenly denied rejected prior to implementation of CR10163. Make sure your billing staffs are aware of these changes to determine if there is a need to submit a reprocessing request to your Medicare Administrative Contractor (MAC).
Background:
CR10163 alerts providers that CMS periodically updates the lists of HCPCS codes that are excluded from the CB provision of the SNF PPS. Services excluded from SNF PPS and CB may be paid to providers, other than SNFs, for beneficiaries, even when in a SNF stay. Services not appearing on the exclusion lists submitted on claims to MACs will not be paid by Medicare to any providers other than a SNF.
For non-therapy services, SNF CB applies only when the services are furnished to a SNF resident during a covered Part A stay; however, SNF CB applies to physical and occupational therapies and speech-language pathology services whenever they are furnished to a SNF resident, regardless of whether Part A covers the stay. In order to assure proper payment in all settings, Medicare systems must edit for services provided to SNF beneficiaries both included and excluded from SNF CB. The updated lists for institutional and professional billing are available at
http://www.cms.gov/Medicare/Billing/SNFConsolidatedBilling/index.html.
Certain radiation therapy codes are included as services that are not subject to SNF CB. These codes can be submitted globally (no modifier), professional component only (modifier 26), or technical component only (modifier TC).
When the codes listed below are submitted globally or just for the technical component, the claims are being rejected by Medicare's Common Working File (CWF). That is to say, they are not allowed to pay separately outside of the consolidated payment that is made to the SNF.
When submitted with the 26 modifier for just the professional component, the claims have been allowed to pay. The following are the allowable HCPCS codes: 77014, 77750, 77761, 77762, 77763, 77776, 77777, 77778, 77785, 77786, 77787, 77789, 77790, 77799, 79005, 79101, and 79445.
This error is occurring because the codes were not added by CMS to the appropriate coding lists with the 2015, 2016, and 2017 SNF CB Annual Updates. CR10163 corrects this error. Therefore, when brought to their attention, your MAC will reprocess claims with dates of service on or after January 1, 2015, that were erroneously denied/rejected.
