Anesthesia Coding Alert

Start with all insurance cards, not just Medicare. Anesthesia providers don't often see patients in the office, but your office staff plays an important role in making sure claims get paid. If your practice audits show errors from billing Medicare Secondary Payer (MSP) claims as primary, read on for the latest CMS instructions for MSP filing success from a recent MLN Matters article. 1. Verify all of the patient's insurers. Get copies of all the patient's insurance cards. Sometimes a patient might present his Medicare identification card, but not the cards for additional payers. This could cause unnecessary denials if you're inappropriately billing Medicare as primary. The opposite situation can also throw a kink in your coding. "If the patient is of Medicare age and the Medicare information isn't provided, the patient may have MSP," says Kelly Dennis, MBA, ACS-AN, CAN-PC, CHCA, CPC, CPC-I, owner of Perfect Office Solutions in [...]