Gastroenterology Coding Alert

Check out this advice on 'split' CC visits. When a gastroenterologist leaves a critically ill patient's bedside to attend to another matter, that does not mean you have to permanently stop the critical care clock -- though you do have to quit counting minutes until the critical care resumes. Physicians Provide Non-Consecutive Critical Care "Critical care time does not need to be continuous. For example, the physician could provide 35 minutes of CC in the morning, then 23 more in the afternoon," offers Michael Lemanski, MD, billing director at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, Mass. Consider this detailed GI example, courtesy of Lemanski: The gastroenterologist meets a 68-year-old woman with cirrhosis at the local ED. She appears very pale, hypotensive, and tachycardic. The gastroenterologist orders two large bore IVs so she can administer fluid boluses and get the patient cross-matched for blood. The gastroenterologist documents that he spent 67 minutes providing critical [...]