Behavioral Health H&P

[brussell83]

I work in Behavioral Health, and we do inpatient admissions to our psychiatric hospital. We have medical providers who do the H&P as part of the psychiatric admission. They bill separately the professional fee. The psychiatric provider is the admitting physician, but the medical provider does the H&P as part of the admission. For the coding aspect, we need clarity if the medical provider doing the H&P should first code the admitting diagnosis/principal diagnosis, that was the reason for the admission (which is the principal psychiatric diagnosis) followed by the medical diagnosis that will be managed during the hospital stay? Are should the medical provider code only the medical diagnosis they are treating?

 

[natashalage]

hello, I am not an expert but here are my thoughts. They are 2 different specialties that will treat Different dx. Both of them can bill for Initial Inp E/M but I would put 1st the dx or s/s that will be treated. For example, psych will treat mental dx- coded 1st but for other specialty/medical provider i would put his dx, s/s that he will be treating (that was the reason why his specialty was called in). IF mental dx affect the medical dx, then i would add mental dx as additional.