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Pulmonology Coding Alert

Evaluation and Management:

You Can Get Paid Using Established Patient Phone Consultation Codes

Published on Fri Sep 23, 2011

Earn as much as $25.48 for phone calls not part of a face-to-face visit.Physicians and their patients spend more and more time on the phone for consultations these days, but is this service a no-no? If you're asking whether or not you can make money out of this service, the answer is yes. Then again, just like other consultation codes, you have to stick to some guidelines.Downside: Medicare will not pay for patient consultations performed over the phone. Other payers may, however, so you will have to check with them on a case by case basis.When you bill for telephone services, you would typically do so using two sets of codes: 99441-99443 (Non-face-to-face physician telephone services), which are for phone services by physicians; and 98966-98968 (Non-face-to-face nonphysician telephone services), which are for services by "qualified non-physician healthcare professionals." These code sets debuted in 2008, and replaced the complexity-based telephone call [...]
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