Podiatry Coding & Billing Alert

Question: The podiatrist recently consulted on a new Medicare patient. Medicare no longer accepts the consult codes. What code should I report? North Dakota Subscriber Answer: With the no-pay policy on office consultation codes (99241-99245, Office consultation for a new or established patient ...) and inpatient consultation codes (99251-99255, Inpatient consultation for a new or established patient ...), CMS is poised to allow specialists to bill initial hospital care for their first visit with an inpatient. It helps to stop thinking of these hospital care codes as admit codes. How it works: If your podiatrist performs a consultation in the hospital, you should use an initial hospital code (99221-99223) or subsequent hospital visit code (99231-99233), according to Medicare's new consultation guidelines for 2010. In the past, only the admitting physician reported initial hospital care codes (99221-99223, Initial hospital care ...), and specialists who saw the patient subsequently and separately often [...]