Archive for The Month of April, 2006
Archive for the Month of April, 2006
Welcome to the medical billing blog archive for the month of April, 2006.
Here you will find links to every article added to the Outsource Management Group web site during the month of April, 2006.
You can browse this month's archives by clicking the "More" button from any of the excerpts below.
Medical Billing News -AMA Eliminates Modifier Hyphen
You may have noticed in recent coding alerts that there is no hyphen included before a modifier. The AMA has done away with using hyphens before modifiers. This change occurs in CPT’s coding manuals and CPT assistant as well. The AMA used the hyphen as a formatting convention in order to ensure that people realized that an upcoming number was a modifier. The symbol avoided numerical confusion as well. The hyphen would alert a reader that the last two digits, such as “-25” were not a part of the CPT code. This should not be a huge change, since most people are most likely used to looking at modifiers without …
Three Rules for Observation Medical Billing Coding
There are three rules that govern observation coding. Let’s use for example a case in which a surgeon admits a patient for observation at 9 p.m. and releases the patient the next day, at 1 a.m. Follow these three rules, and you will be all set. 1. If a physician admits a patient for observation and releases the patient on a different date of service, if the total duration of the observation stay is more than eight hours, you should report 99218-99220 with 99217. If a stay lasts multiple days, you may report one unit of 99218-99220 for each date of service, except the date when they physician discharges the …
Apply a Flat Fee for Sedation Codes
A provider that is not an anesthesiologist, such as a pediatrician, should use the new moderate sedation codes (99143 – 99150) to capture the charge for the procedure’s base units. These codes eliminate any need to bill extra units. You should ignore billable units and use new time-based codes instead. For example, a 4 year old presents for an MRI performed by a radiologist. A pediatrician provides moderate sedation throughout the procedure. The sedation lasts for thirty minutes. Before, you would have coded this sedation by with anesthesia code 01922. Because this procedure has seven base units and 2 time units, you would have billed 01922 x 9. On new …
E/M Might be the Answer to BCP for Acne
Birth control pills for acne can be a perplexing coding problem. Occasionally, we come across a case in which a patient obtains birth control pills because her dermatologist recommended them to help clear up an acne problem. Some people say that we should not even code the birth control pills (oral contraception), but if this is the only problem that the patient presented to the OB-GYN for, does that mean that we should still not code for it to keep with specificity? E/M might be the answer to this particular problem you may come across. If an OB-GYN prescribes birth control pills (BCPs) to a patient for acne problems, that …
Modifier 51 Not to be Used by Hospitals
The multiple procedure code Modifier 51, causes some confusion among medical billing because it relates to multiple procedures performed but what many medical coders miss is the fact it only applies to multiple procedures performed by physicians and imaging centers. Carriers already assume during a hospital stay that multiple procedures will already be performed therefore designation of the exact nature and type of services rendered by the attending physician will still suffice for hospital medical billing claims. The CPT manual designates modifier 51 (Multiple procedures) exempt codes with a “circle with a slash” symbol to the left of the code. Pay close attention to those codes which don’t need modifier …
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