Wiki Consultation codes please help

[Cindyrev67]

If one of our doctors sees a patient in the hospital two days prior to being admitted (the was on observation status) would I report codes 99241-99245, office or other outpatient consultations, or codes 99251-99255, inpatient consultations? Our doctor was not the admitting doctor. We just saw this patient while on observation before being admitted.

 

[krburke]

Observation=outpatient

Since observation services are considered an outpatient setting, you would use the 99241-99245 series of codes, assuming that all the requirements of a consultation service were also met.