Primary Care Coding Alert

Forget about incident-to in the facility, but consider this option. So you have all of Medicare's rules for incident-to billing down pat. But have you ever heard of split/sharedvisit billing? Coders that don't understand shared-visit billing could be costing their practices. Follow this advice on the basics of shared-visit billing. FP 'Face Time' a Must for Shared Visits During a shared visit, a qualified nonphysician practitioner (NPP) and the physician "team up" to provide a complete E/M service to the patient, confirms Lynn Anderanin, CPC, CPC-I, COSC, senior coding consultant for Health Info Services in Park Ridge, Ill. "Incident-to" billing is not applicable in the inpatient setting. However, you can bill split/shared E/M services in the hospital setting under the physician's National Provider Identifier (NPI). The catch: The physician must provide a face-to-face service or you cannot report a shared visit in this setting, warns Kimberly Sullivan, CPC, coding specialist [...]