ED Coding and Reimbursement Alert

Risk missing an element if you don't look hard for social history items. Payers reward practices that record robust personal,family, and social history (PFSH) when the provider addresses them out of medical necessity. Bottom line: Accurately counting the number of PFSH items could result in an extra $50 or more for the encounter, as the top-level ED E/Ms require PFSH elements. Check out these quick tips on fishing PFSH items out of encounter notes. ED Setting Results in Frequent PFSH PFSH recording is not always a required part of the history portion of an ED E/M service (99281-99285); in fact, you can report up to 99283 (Emergency department visit for the evaluation and management of a patient, which requires these 3 key components: an expanded problem focused history; an expanded problem focused examination; and medical decision making of moderate complexity ...) without any PFSH info on the claim, says Pam [...]