ED Coding and Reimbursement Alert

Question: Can you count the time a physician is involved in "pre hospital care" in critical care time? All I can really find is that the patient needs to be "directly available to the physician." We have some controversy on this with the physicians that I am hoping to solve. Any help would be appreciated. Georgia Subscriber Answer: The critical care codes do have some pre-service time allocated in assigning their relative value units. It is not uncommon to have some notification that a major trauma patient or patients are on their way, giving the emergency physician a little time to prepare for their arrival. In fact, the facility trauma response team activation code, G0390 (Trauma response team associated with hospital critical care service) specifically requires hospital notification by two-way radio. There is a CPT® code 99288 (Physician direction of emergency medical systems [EMS] emergency care, advanced life support) that [...]