William E. Berlin of the Ober|Kaler law firm's Washington, D.C. office provides this excellent overview of antitrust enforcement activities and directions by the Obama Administration.

In 2009, numerous new and expanded deductions and credits came into being for a broad cross-section of taxpayers: College tax benefits for parents and students; energy credits for homeowners who are going green; and even tax breaks for home buyers and car buyers. Following is a summary of these tax law changes.

In case your head has been in the sand, Medicare for 2010 has eliminated the use of all consultation codes (inpatient and office/outpatient codes) for various places of service except for telehealth consultation G-codes. CMS increased the work relative value units (RVUs) for new and established office visits, increasing the work RVUs for initial hospital and initial nursing facility visits, and incorporating the increased use of these visits into our practice expense PE and malpractice calculations. CMS also increased the incremental work RVUs for the evaluation and management (E/M) codes that are built into the 10-day and 90-day global surgical codes. If you bill consultation codes and have not read the CMS transmittal, do so immediately so you can make sure you bill your services correctly to Medicare. Here is the link.

Here are recent posts to my blog; stop by for a visit: rtacpa.blogs.com

http://rtacpa.blogs.com/

·         Strategic planning made easy

·         Business Use of Employer-provided Cell Phone – an update

·         Back in vogue - private practices, hospitals teaming up again

·         Medicare Physician Signature Requirements

·         Keeping track of collections

·         Paid Tax Return Preparers

·         Annual OSHA Training Is the Best Way to Protect Your Employees and Maintain Compliance

·         Physician compliance plans - employee reporting

·         It’s That Time of Year Again (AGAIN)

Do you have a strategic plan?