ACP advocacy contributes to CMS changes in E/M documentation for medical students
Verifying student documentation in a patient's medical record allows teaching physicians to provide a meaningful educational experience within a much more streamlined workflow, eliminating an unnecessary administrative burden.
A recent change from CMS allowing teaching physicians to verify student documentation in a patient's medical record related to Evaluation and Management code services is a positive response to ACP's advocacy efforts.
Before the change, physicians were required to re-document most work performed by medical students, creating an unnecessary administrative burden for teaching physicians. This change allows teaching physicians to provide a meaningful educational experience for students within a much more streamlined workflow, eliminating an unnecessary administrative burden for teaching physicians and improving the ability for students to feel valued and learn.
ACP worked closely with the Alliance for Academic Internal Medicine and others in the internal medicine community as well as directly with CMS to push for this change. The change will help better prepare medical students to effectively use an electronic health record, allow them to become more meaningful participants in patient care, and help them develop important competencies needed for training, licensure, and the lifelong practice of medicine.
ACP has long advocated for commonsense changes to reduce unnecessary practice burdens and simplify administrative tasks, as exemplified through its Patients Before Paperwork initiative, which began in 2015.