Urology Coding Alert

Growing numbers mean more scrutiny

According to the American Medical Association, nearly 60 percent of group practices employ NPPs.   With physician assistants and nurse practitioners providing more and more billable services in urology practices, knowing how to bill for those services is critical. Physician assistants saw over 23 million patients in 2003 for urological disorders, according to the American Academy of Physician Assistants.

Even if your practice scrupulously follows federal regulations, coding and billing for NPP services are  being constantly scrutinized by the OIG, so beware.

Not all facilities take advantage of NPPs. Teaching hospitals, such as the University of California San Francisco, use residents to do many of the duties the attending physician might perform rather than NPPs, says Luisa Realubin, CPC, at UCSF. Other practices prefer not to use NPPs out of what they feel is professional courtesy. "Our physicians feel that they are specialists, and most of the patients we see are on a referral basis from other physicians. It would be an insult to send them to a PA," says Cheryl Westbrook, CPC, CCS-P, of the Urology Group in Oklahoma City.