Archive for The Month of August, 2006
Archive for the Month of August, 2006
Welcome to the medical billing blog archive for the month of August, 2006.
Here you will find links to every article added to the Outsource Management Group web site during the month of August, 2006.
You can browse this month's archives by clicking the "More" button from any of the excerpts below.
Proper Use of Afterhours Codes in Your Medical Billing
If an ob-gyn is called to the office at midnight to see a patient for an after-hours ob check, using the proper coding designation will make or break your medical billing claim. First of all, take in to consideration the location. If the care was provided at a 24-hour facility, you will want to use CPT after-hours code 99050 (Services provided in the office at times other than regularly scheduled office hours, or days when the office is normally closed …). Do not use codes 99052-99054. The old way of reporting this scenario was that CPT used to look at these type of claims based on time and day. The …
2 Types of NCCI Edits
NCCI contains two types of edits: mutually exclusive and comprehensive/component edits. Knowing the difference between these types of edits can benefit your practice. Mutually exclusive edits pair procedures or services that the physician would not reasonably perform at the same session, at the same anatomic location, on the same beneficiary. A good example is using 76828 (Doppler echocardiography, fetal, pulsed wave and/or continuous wave with spectral display; follow-up or repeat study) is a component of 76820 (Doppler velocimetry, fetal; umbilical artery) and 76821 (… middle cerebral artery), thanks to an NCCI mutually exclusive edit. However, if you were to report two mutually exclusive codes for the same patient during the …
Top Notch Coding Strategies for Radiology
There are a number of changes in the niche of Intervention Radiology that many radiologists are not taking full advantage of, and that is costing them in the form of lower reimbursements. Many radiologists avoid billing for E/M services even when they are warranted as until recent times, many carriers would not consider the intervention radiology as part of an individual claim and it was bundled into other services. With careful documentation and proper coding, you can get reimbursed for several services you currently perform and even perhaps perform for free. Another way to get reimbursed for certain services you may not currently receiving payment for is to phase them …
Proper Coding for Cervical Vertebroplasty
Some of the confusion about preparing medical billing is that the CPT does not always provide an exact code for a particular procedure, in this case we’ll use percutaneous vertebroplasty of cervical vertebra(e). It’s not a common procedure but it does occur and until recent years did not have its own designation and even today, some payers aren’t up to date on the proper coding to use to report this procedure. Before CPT added percutaneous vertebroplasty codes 22520-22522 in 2001, most payers recommended that coders report all vertebroplasty procedures using 22899 (Unlisted procedure, spine). Most payers still recommend using 22899 code for cervical vertebroplasties, as many carriers aren’t aware of …
Catching Medical Billing Denials Before They Happen
The biggest medical billing problem is getting denied payment for a claim. A service for which many patients are denied is counseling to quit smoking or the cessation of other tobacco product related use counseling. Since this is a voluntary activity, many payers have a hard time reimbursing for this service. The patient either has no coverage for the counseling under their plan or is only allowed a certain amount of counseling sessions for the smoking cessation purpose. What happens if another physician has already done medical billing for these counseling sessions? Chances are, you would not get paid. In many cases you won’t find out until you have already …
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