Do outpatient reimbursement challenges frustrate you a lot? Medicare reimbursement regulations that are currently impacting wound care practices. Wound care professionals still have to follow the coding, payment, and coverage regulations for submitting claims to traditional Medicare.

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Top 5 Outpatient reimbursement questions for Wound Care
Do outpatient reimbursement challenges frustrate you a lot? Medicare reimbursement regulations that are currently
impacting wound care practices. Wound care professionals still have to follow the coding, payment, and coverage
regulations for submitting claims to traditional Medicare.
Below are top 5 questions that clarify outpatient reimbursement questions for wound care:
1. Why it is crucial to know whether the outpatient wound clinic is a hospital-based outpatient wound care
department or just a wound clinic?
When patients are examined in a hospital-based outpatient wound care clinic they receive 2 bills i.e. one from
HOPD and another from QHP.
Hence; the patients are seen by a QHP in his or her office, the patients and Medicare only receive one bill.
Patients should be informed about whether they should expect one or two bills.
2. There’s always a coding confusion and diagnoses typically needs to be updated – how to do that?
Codes for products, procedures/services, and diagnoses are typically updated on an annual basis, although some
codes for drugs/biologics and coding edits (see below) may be modified on a quarterly basis. Two major coding
regulations are impacting the wound care industry and deserve special attention from wound care professionals:

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Top 5 Outpatient reimbursement questions for Wound Care
 Define patients’ clinical status and to treat their complex medical conditions
 Coordinate care among providers, and support new payment methods that drive quality of care
3. If an LCD is not written about a particular service, procedure, or product, Medicare does not cover it?
No, it doesn’t. If a MAC has not released an LCD, it means the Medicare administrative contractor has not found a
reason to control the utilization of the particular service, procedure, or product.
In this case, coverage will be based on medical necessity as proven by the patient’s diagnosis and the
documentation in the medical record.
4. How often should wound care professionals look for updates to LCDs?
Medicare administrative contractors may update LCDs as often as they deem necessary. However; some LCDs
were updated 5 or 6 times a year.
Therefore, wound care professionals should assign someone to review LCDs on a monthly basis. When LCDs are
revised, all wound care professionals should read them carefully.
5. Why do all wound care professionals require reading the NCDs and LCDs that pertain to the wound care work
they perform?

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Top 5 Outpatient reimbursement questions for Wound Care
Wound care professionals must know these coverage rules. If a Medicare patient’s medical condition aligns with
the coverage rules, the service/product/procedure has a good chance of Medicare payment.
If not, the wound care professional should explain the coverage situation to the Medicare beneficiary and give
the beneficiary the opportunity to receive and personally pay for the necessary care.
That is achieved by the wound care professional providing the Medicare beneficiary with an Advance Beneficiary
Notice of Non-coverage and by the beneficiary signing the notice and agreeing to pay for the care.
If you wish to learn more about these and other reimbursement topics, you and your revenue cycle team may connect
with MBC experts – the only professional medical billing and coding service provider that you can trust.