Wiki Coding Allergy Shots

[Leslie Parker]

We're Internal Medicine- just starting to give one pt montly allgery shots. Nurse gives 3 injections from 3 vials of med patient brings in. No exam done by doctor. We used 95117. We re reimbursed $15 by insurance. It takes our nurse almost an hour with her~she does "peak flow" measurements, etc. so, a very low reimbursement for the amount of time given by our RN. Are there any other codes we may be missing?

 

[DawnTaddeo]

Are we talking pollen immunotherapy or something else? The average reimbursement for 95117 is about $15. As a rule, pollen immunotherapy does not require peak flow readings so knowing what you are injecting would help. Unfortunately, administration of pollen immunotherapy doesn't usually require any other nursing or physician intervention except to keep the patient in the office for 20 minutes to monitor for systemic reaction. Sometimes, the nurse may need to address another problem with the patient (separate from the injection) and 99211-25 along with the 95117 may be billable. But, the bottom line is that if you are only administering pollen immunotherapy then you can only bill 95117.