Wiki Hospital Discharge

[Cindyrev67]

Our doctor wants to bill for a hospital discharge but the patient died on the same day. She did dictate a discharge summary for this patient but at the end of the report she states, "patient taken off life support and died a short time later." Can we bill for that? Our doctor was handling the pain management for this patient.

Hope this makes sense.

 

[tlwhlw]

Since the patient wasn't discharged to home, nursing facility, rehab....there's no discharge....the patient didn't continue care or recovery somewhere else. Your physician could code a subsequent visit, as per documentation, 99231-33. Check your carrier information also.

There may be some coding available if your physician pronounced the "time of death"....???