Belinda Frisch
Guru
Our business office is apparently experiencing denials for admissions based on date of service (and what I assume is claims matching).
Here's the scenario:
A patient comes to our hospital in the late afternoon/evening and is "admitted" as an inpatient. The actual admission H&P (physician documentation) is done the next day when a hospitalist is on-staff. The hospital bill is surely going in with the first day as the admission day, though our physicians have a 24-hour window to do the actual admission examination.
Our director mentioned changing the date of service, but I say it won't match if the documentation is for the subsequent day and I'm not aware of any Medicare regulation that states you can change admission dates. The only exception I'm aware of for date of service is when a patient is pronounced dead and the death certificate is completed on a later date--Medicare allows you to bill the actual date of death as the date of service in that instance.
Anyone have any thoughts on this? Are we the only ones having this problem?
PLEASE provide resources when possible.
Here's the scenario:
A patient comes to our hospital in the late afternoon/evening and is "admitted" as an inpatient. The actual admission H&P (physician documentation) is done the next day when a hospitalist is on-staff. The hospital bill is surely going in with the first day as the admission day, though our physicians have a 24-hour window to do the actual admission examination.
Our director mentioned changing the date of service, but I say it won't match if the documentation is for the subsequent day and I'm not aware of any Medicare regulation that states you can change admission dates. The only exception I'm aware of for date of service is when a patient is pronounced dead and the death certificate is completed on a later date--Medicare allows you to bill the actual date of death as the date of service in that instance.
Anyone have any thoughts on this? Are we the only ones having this problem?
PLEASE provide resources when possible.