jtuominen
Guru
Hi there--
I was wondering if anyone has run into this conundrum--
A fellow coder is struggling with what to do when an E/M code is assigned for a doctor visit while the patient is in oberservation status. The problem that is arising is that some of these patients change over to inpatient on their second or third day after the doctor visit. So the quandry is:
Patient comes to hosptial, and is oberservation from 5/9 to 5/11
Patient admitted as inpatient to hosptial on 5/11, discharged on 5/13.
When the coder tries to code the account, she is running into the problem that she cannot bill for her E/M services because they fall outside the inpatient admission. Has anyone dealt with this problem? Perhaps this is all just due to a flaw in our workflow/processes, but I wondered how others may have dealt with this. Please help!
I was wondering if anyone has run into this conundrum--
A fellow coder is struggling with what to do when an E/M code is assigned for a doctor visit while the patient is in oberservation status. The problem that is arising is that some of these patients change over to inpatient on their second or third day after the doctor visit. So the quandry is:
Patient comes to hosptial, and is oberservation from 5/9 to 5/11
Patient admitted as inpatient to hosptial on 5/11, discharged on 5/13.
When the coder tries to code the account, she is running into the problem that she cannot bill for her E/M services because they fall outside the inpatient admission. Has anyone dealt with this problem? Perhaps this is all just due to a flaw in our workflow/processes, but I wondered how others may have dealt with this. Please help!