Pediatric Coding Alert

Question: We are looking to hire a pediatrician, but in the meantime our schedule is overwhelmed, so we decided to open our doors for several Saturdays and weekday evenings until further notice. Should we charge after hours code 99050 at these appointments?

Codify Subscriber

Answer: No. You should instead use 99051 (Services provided in the office during regularly scheduled evening, weekend, or holiday office hours, in addition to basic service), which is for services occurring on evenings and weekends during scheduled hours. In contrast, code 99050 (Services provided in the office at times other than regularly scheduled office hours, or days when the office is normally closed [e.g., holidays, Saturday or Sunday], in addition to basic service) is for services outside regular posted/published scheduled hours.

Since your office is planning to be open for evening and weekend hours albeit on a temporary basis, those non-routine hours become your regularly scheduled hours. Therefore, the appointments scheduled during those added hours do not qualify for 99050. “Code 99050 is intended to describe circumstances under which patient requested care is outside of the usual timeframe of the routine scheduling,” according to CPT^® Assistant, August 2010.

Check with your major insurers’ payment policies on special services codes. Payers may view extra hours for preventive medicine services as a convenience and restrict the coverage of 99051 to problem E/M visits, such as your sick clinic would offer. These payers, however, may not pay for 99051 when billed with preventive codes, such as administration codes (90465-90474) that would be billed for flu shot clinics or patient convenience preventive medicine visits.

Reason: Some payers will pay for special services only when the reason the patient is seeing the physician is for a condition that might require an urgent care visit. The insurer is willing to pay extra for the special services code in order to avoid incurring the additional costs associated with additional costs associated with the patient seeking a more expensive urgent care or emergency department visit. 

Keep in mind: What all pediatric practices should remember is that 99051 is a convenience code: You are open to help the family so that they do not have to take the next day off of work and the child doesn’t need to miss school. Many times these codes will impact the deductible but you are still coding appropriately to use them. You have to pay for all overhead whenever you are open, so this extra charge is often seen as allowing you to offset that.