Eli's Rehab Report

Published on Thu Jan 01, 2004 PDF

Question: When we admit a patient to the hospital directly from the office, should we bill just the office visit or both the office visit and the hospital admission?

Florida Subscriber

Answer: Usually when you admit a patient to the hospital, you should roll everything your physician performed that day into the admission code.

You can't bill a separate hospital admission and a separate office E/M service on the same day unless you meet certain criteria. If the physiatrist renders a consultation in the office on Thursday and decides he should admit the patient to the hospital - he writes orders, and sends in the orders, a history and a physical - he may only report the in-office consultation code if the patient is not seen in the hospital face-to-face that day. If on the following day, Friday, the physiatrist performs the initial hospital visit, you should report the office consultation performed on Thursday as well as Friday's initial hospital care (99221 to 99223).

- You Be the Coder and Reader Questions were reviewed by Laureen Jandroep, OTR, CPC, CCS-P, CPC-H, CCS, director and senior instructor for the CRN Institute, an online coding certification training center.