Statement attributed to:
Patrice A. Harris, M.D., M.A.
President, American Medical Association

"Physicians spend a huge amount of time meeting burdensome documentation requirements during patient interactions, which takes time away from patients and contributes significantly to physician burnout and professional dissatisfaction. Our aim is to reduce this burden and provide physicians more time with patients, not paperwork.

"CMS Administrator Verma made it a priority to reduce documentation of evaluation and management (E/M) office visit services as part of her Patients Over Paperwork initiative. Over the past year, the AMA and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) worked together to achieve the first overhaul of E/M office visit documentation and coding in more than 25 years. This new approach is a significant step in reducing administrative burdens that get in the way of patient care.

"Now it's time for vendors and payors to take the necessary next steps to align their systems with E/M office visit code changes by the time the revisions are deployed on January 1, 2021. In the coming months, the AMA will undertake an aggressive effort to ensure that EHR providers, coders, payors and other vendors implement simplified coding so physicians no longer labor under undue documentation complexity.

"The AMA urges the entire health care industry to implement the simplified approach to E/M office visit documentation and coding, and will continue to provide information and resources to help ease this transition."