By Staff Reporters

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DEFINITION

Upcoding is a type of fraud where healthcare providers submit inaccurate billing codes to insurance companies in order to receive inflated reimbursements. These false “current procedural technology” (CPT) submissions indicate that doctors provided patients with treatments that were more complex, costly, and time-consuming than what they actually received. This unlawful scheme is a violation of the False Claims Act (FCA) because it defrauds federal programs including Medicare, Medicaid, and Tricare.

CITE: https://www.r2library.com/Resource/Title/082610254

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There are nearly 7,800 CPT codes used by healthcare providers. Collectively, these codes represent all of the procedures, conditions, and drugs that are currently reimbursable by the health insurance industry. Each one of them has an associated cost for individuals and insurance companies, based upon the urgency of the issue and the complexity of the decision-making required of the healthcare provider. Medicaid and Medicare reimburse providers based on this system.
For example, a five-minute consultation with a nurse for a minor medical question would receive a different, less expensive CPT than the one for a full examination by a doctor lasting 45-minutes. However, if the physician charges the federal programs for the more expensive 45-minute examination when the five-minute consultation is what actually occurred, this would constitute upcoding.

Unbundling

Unbundling is another common form of upcoding. This fraudulent scheme involves billing for individual procedures that are usually performed and billed together under a single CPT code. In some cases, the billing codes for complicated medical operations have associated components built into their CPTs. For example, a hip replacement surgery may factor in the costs of the surgeon’s as well as the use of the operating room. Unbundling occurs when a healthcare provider submits each component within a CPT to Medicare or Medicaid separately. This creates a cost redundancy where wrongdoers can unlawfully seek reimbursement for the same procedure several times over.

CMS: https://www.cms.gov/Outreach-and-Education/Medicare-Learning-Network-MLN/MLNProducts/Downloads/Fraud-Abuse-MLN4649244.pdf

What Is Downcoding?

Downcoding is the opposite of upcoding. If you perform a service but record the CPT for a lower-level service, that is downcoding. Downcoding also leaves you vulnerable to an audit, which is never good. But, it can also cost a practice thousands of dollars a year in lost revenue because you’re not getting the higher rate of pay that you would if you had recorded the service properly.

According to the National Correct Coding Initiative (NCCI): “Physicians must avoid downcoding. If an HCPCS/CPT code exists that describes the services performed, the physician must report this code rather than report a less comprehensive code with other codes describing the services not included in the less comprehensive code.”

MORE: https://zeemedicalbilling.com/what-is-upcoding-and-downcoding-in-medical-billing/

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HERE: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8649706/

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Filed under: "Advisors Only", "Doctors Only", Accounting, Career Development, Ethics, Health Law & Policy, Healthcare Finance, Industry Indignation Index, Risk Management | Tagged: CPT, CPT codes, down coding up coding, medical billing, MEDICAL BILLING: Down and Up Coding?, medical coding, proprer coding, up coding, upcoding | 2 Comments »