Neurosurgery Coding Alert

Length of observation period is key to accurate reporting.When your surgeon places a patient under observation instead of requesting an admission for treatment, you will need to keep a watch on the number of hours of observation. "Physicians should be aware that hospitals, based on compliance software, may change a patient's "admission status" to observation rather than inpatient hospitalization, sometimes without the physician's knowledge," says Gregory Przybylski, MD, director of neurosurgery, New Jersey Neuroscience Institute, JFK Medical Center, Edison. Follow the tips below to report observations with convenience and accuracy. Learn Timelines for Same Day DischargeWhen you report observation care services, you need to look hard at the time the patient was placed under observation.For patients placed under observation for a period lasting more than eight hours but discharged within the same day, you need to report observation codes 99234 (Observation or inpatient hospital care, for the evaluation and management [...]