Wiki Inpatient Coding . . . ?

[Jacoder]

Hey,

I just want to make sure I'm thinking the right way, so I thought I'd ask y'all. When a patient is admitted to the hospital as an inpatient and has, lets say, a chest x-ray and a blood culture done, even though we don't code from these tests we still can't code the case until everything is on the chart, right? Everything has to be complete before we code/bill for the pt's stay. Am I understanding this correctly? I've had some co-workers question this, so I wanted to verify. Thanks for your help!

Jennifer

 

[LLovett]

If you are coding for the professional side, no this is not correct, you just need your providers documentation to be complete for each service you are billing. So if your provider does an admit, orders tests, sees the patient every day, then discharges 2 weeks later you don't wait for everything you bill for each piece as it is complete.

I know very little about the facility side but I do know that at our hospital they will go ahead and do some coding (have no idea what) on larger cases before they are done. There are times we have patients in for 3 months or more. I had one last year that was here for approx 6 months. Obviously huge amounts of money are tied up if we wait on those types of cases.

Hope this helps,

Laura, CPC, CPMA, CEMC