What's new

July updates to standard reimbursement schedules are now available on Availity Essentials’ Fee Schedule Tool. We are currently processing the August and September updates, and they will be available as soon as possible. Production and availability of reimbursement schedules will resume their usual cadence with the October updates. This means that you can expect to receive the October updates on the usual timeline.

We understand that the recent delay in the availability of reimbursement schedule updates may have caused some inconvenience, and we appreciate your patience and understanding.

10/10/24

DispatchHealth can help your moderate- to high-risk patients by bringing urgent medical care to the comfort of their homes. Whether it is after hours, on weekends or holidays, or during times of high patient volume, you can rely on DispatchHealth to help treat your patients.

They are available in the Spokane area.

DispatchHealth works as an extension of your medical team to help you:

• Extend your care after hours, on weekends or holidays, or during capacity constraints
• Improve health outcomes and patient experience
• Gain valuable insight into social determinants of health (SDoH)
• Reduce non-emergent emergency department (ED) usage, hospital admissions and readmissions
• Reduce overall health care costs

They can treat 95% of the top ED diagnoses in the home.

Visit our Care Options Toolkit to learn more.

9/4/2024

Fall brings with it an increase in respiratory viruses that can affect people of all ages. As a health care provider, you play a key role in educating patients, parents and caregivers about vaccinations.

The fall respiratory virus season typically peaks between September and November, with a surge in cases of COVID-19, influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).

While there is no cure for these viruses, there are steps your patients can take to prevent their spread and alleviate symptoms:

• Get vaccinated: Encourage your patients to stay up to date on their vaccinations.
• Practice good hygiene: Teach patients to wash their hands frequently with soap and water, cover their mouth and nose when coughing or sneezing, and avoid close contact with people who are sick.
• Stay home when sick: Emphasize the importance of staying home from work or school when experiencing symptoms to prevent the spread of illness.
• Antiviral medications: For high-risk patients, antiviral medications may be prescribed to help alleviate symptoms and shorten the duration of illness.

By promoting prevention strategies and providing timely treatment, you can make a significant impact in reducing the spread of these viruses. We appreciate you prioritizing patient education, staying up to date with the latest information, and taking a proactive approach to keeping our communities healthy and safe.

Resources

Our Quality Improvement Toolkit includes materials in English and Spanish to share with your patients about influenza immunizations. Other helpful resources include:

• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
• World Health Organization (WHO)
• American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP)

9/4/2024

We’re excited to announce that our medical policies, Clinical Position Statements and online forms are now live. We have migrated them to the same platform as our public websites, bringing a host of exciting changes and innovations, including increased security, design and navigation changes.

The following content is now available on the same platform as the rest of our public websites:

• Commercial medical policies
• Medicare medical policies
• Clinical Practice Guidelines

• Provider forms

With this migration, you’ll enjoy a seamless user experience, complete with:

• A fresh, modern design that’s consistent with our provider website
• Streamlined navigation for medical policies, making it easier to find what you need
• Advanced search functionality that supports searches by line of business, keywords, CPT or HCPCS code
• All medical policies on a single page, sortable by name, policy ID number or effective date
• A convenient drop-down menu for browsing policies by category or section, reducing clicks and saving time

• Enhanced forms functionality

We hope the enhancements we’ve made make using this content even easier.

8/26/2024