As we head into the holiday season and close out another year, here’s your quarterly update from NuVasive Clinical Services (NCS). Below we share a video about the NCS story, best practices in IOM, a recap of our largest tradeshow of the year and more.
Advancing Patient Care
NCS is committed to advancing patient care and reducing risks to help prevent neural injuries in surgery. As one of the largest IOM providers in the country, we support surgeons with best-in-class technology and a highly trained clinical team that help enable improved patient outcomes. Hear our story.
How to optimize neuromonitoring: “What is an alert?”
A podcast by the NASS IOM section, chaired by Drs. Adam Doan and Richard Vogel
In this episode, Adam and Rich discuss what an alert is and what the criteria are for alerts. The answers may surprise you!
Industry spotlight
Check out our five key takeaways from the North American Spine Society’s Annual Meeting (NASS).
NCS and NuVasive are proud to employ many veterans. Learn more about their transition from military service to advancing patient care.
Click the boxes above to read each article.
Compliance corner
NCS is often asked about compliance as it relates to medical billing and coding for IOM. Sometimes clients are reviewing their own practices, and sometimes they are evaluating their IOM service providers.
Why does compliance matter?
Inaccurate coding for medical services or other unethical business practices, even by contracted service providers, can adversely affect hospitals, surgeons and their patients, and have negative financial and reputational repercussions. NCS strives to be as transparent as possible about our own practices, so that our clients can be confident in our commitment to ethics and integrity. But for those clients conducting their own independent review, the IOM landscape can be confusing and conflicting.
What resources are available to you?
If you want to seek your own advice on questions related to billing and coding, compliance and ethical business practices in IOM, here are some suggested resources:
- The American Society of Neurophysiological Monitoring (ASNM) is the oldest IOM society in the world, and the only IOM-specific society in the U.S. In response to growing trends of kickbacks and self-referrals in IOM, ASNM published a Position Statement on Business Practices in IOM. ASNM agrees with the American Medical Association (AMA) that kickbacks and self-referrals are unethical, regardless of legality, because they create a potential for overutilization and substandard care.
- The American Academy of Neurology (AAN) has published a Model Coverage Policy entitled ‘Principles of Coding for Intraoperative Neurophysiologic Monitoring (IOM) and Testing.’
- AMA offers a CPT Assistant, which provides up-to-date guidance on AMA CPT and is easily searchable by specific code. This is a useful reference tool for those with questions about correct coding for IOM services, including the use of codes 95941 and 95940 (remote or simultaneous professional oversight services vs. single patient professional oversight from inside the OR).
For any questions on medical billing and coding for IOM, feel free to contact NCS at [email protected].
Meet our team
Meet Dan
Neurophysiologist, Iowa
“The best part of my job is building great relationships with the staff at hospitals. You get to know one another really well since you see them multiple times per week and know all about one another’s lives. It feels like you’re a part of a big family.”
Hear more from the NCS team at #MeetTheNP.
To see the Q3 NCS Newsletter, click here.
* Certain applications of the Pulse platform are under development and not available for commercial sales; robotics and smart tools are not cleared for use by the FDA.