A few months ago I posted information on the new Medicare benefit for tobacco cessation counseling in the United States.  (For those outside the U.S., Medicare is the program that pays for medical services for persons aged 65 and older, plus disabled persons.)

 

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has recently provided information on their website on how to bill Medicare for delivering tobacco cessation counseling services.  This information is available online at:

 

 

 

 

Preventive services covered by Medicare have typically been underutilized.  So I encourage widespread dissemination of this information to maximize the use of this benefit.

 

Best wishes,
Ron

 

 

*** Note that my AMA email address has changed from
ron_davis@ama-assn.org to ron.davis@ama-assn.org
(replacing the underscore character with a "dot").
The old version will work at least till the end of 2005. ***

 

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Ronald M. Davis, M.D.
Director
Center for Health Promotion & Disease Prevention
Henry Ford Health System
One Ford Place, 5C
Detroit, Michigan 48202-3450, USA
Tel:   +1 313-874-6276
Fax:  +1 313-874-6273
Pager:  +1 877-486-5966
             8774865966@skytel.com *
E-mail:  rdavis1@hfhs.org
             ron.davis@ama-assn.org
* for short, urgent text messages

 

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