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Podiatry Coding & Billing Alert

Reader Question:

Don't Waste Time Billing $0 Charges

Published on Wed Jan 20, 2010

Question: I bill post-op visits with CPT code 99024 and charge $0. Sometimes it goes through, but today I had a status message that BCBS rejected my claim with three services of post-op visits stating: "at least one line item charge amount must be > than zero." I should not be charging anything for the post-op visits, so what do I do? Washington Subscriber Answer: Don't bother billing out the zero dollar post op services. You should delete the claims and not worry about the rejected claims since Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) obviously is not interested in tracking them. Most payers won't care that you are doing follow-up or post-op care if you're not charging them. Suggestion: You should obviously have documentation in the patient's medical record of any post-op visit. You may also want to post the charge to your system for internal audit and tracking purposes. However, [...]
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