Medical Billing for Nutritional Counseling

With obesity among patients rising at an alarming rate, the continuing counseling of patients who need nutritional information, especially for controlling their diabetic conditions is also on the rise and it is fast becoming a common coding in medical billing.

If it can be reimbursed and how it can be reimbursed are two dilemmas that many physicians are finding confusing. If you’re not getting reimbursed for your patient counseling, you’re losing money for your practice.

When an individual nutritionist consults with a patient in a non-certified physician setting, you’ll most likely report sessions with 97802-97804. But if your practice has an American Diabetes Association-approved program, you may also use Medicare-specific codes G0108-G0109.

For reimbursement for non-certified programs, you will need to select the nutrition code based on the patient’s individual diagnosis. Use 97802 (Medical nutrition therapy; initial assessment and intervention, individual, face-to-face with the patient, each 15 minutes) is billed.

Follow-up nutritional information sessions are billed using 97803 (… re-assessment and intervention, individual, face-to-face with the patient) and are billed in 15-minute increments. Don’t miss out on getting reimbursed for your nutritional counseling sessions, you could be missing out on a valuable addition of revenue for your practice.

View all Articles by: Melissa Clark, CCS-P