News-At-A-Glance: Another Update and Correction for Hepatitis C Screening

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has corrected an important omission that affects professional claims filed by independent laboratories related to hepatitis C screening. Change request 8871, dated Nov. 26, defines and clarifies the professional and institutional billing requirements for the Medicare screening benefit for hepatitis C. In this third revision, place of service code 81 identifying independent laboratories has finally been added as an allowed place of service. Other changes in this latest revision include clarifying information for payment methodologies and adding place of service 50 for federally qualified health centers and 72 for rural health clinics. There are also revisions to Medicare Administrative Contractors claims processing instructions and implementation information. If your laboratory is getting denials for this new screening benefit, it may be useful to refer back to this revised version when talking to your Medicare contractor about the problem.