kbreeden
Contributor
Can anyone comment on the way to correctly bill Medicare secondary for the new way of consults. Say if the patient has BC primary and Medicare secondary.
I can share what my carrier instructed recently.
If the patient has BCBS prim and Medicare 2ndry, bill BCBS as you normally would. example: 99244 (assuming they haven't adopted Medicare's new policy). Once this is paid by BCBS, you change the CPT code to reflect the correct code for Medicare. Our carrier made it very clear that it was appropriate and correct coding to make this change. Now...the hard part is how to report the primary payment. Our carrier will not accept paper claims w/ paper EOB's so the solution was to void the original charge, repost, and report the primary payment electronically. Talk about NUTS!
I can share what my carrier instructed recently.
If the patient has BCBS prim and Medicare 2ndry, bill BCBS as you normally would. example: 99244 (assuming they haven't adopted Medicare's new policy). Once this is paid by BCBS, you change the CPT code to reflect the correct code for Medicare. Our carrier made it very clear that it was appropriate and correct coding to make this change. Now...the hard part is how to report the primary payment. Our carrier will not accept paper claims w/ paper EOB's so the solution was to void the original charge, repost, and report the primary payment electronically. Talk about NUTS!
Lisa,
That's the predicament we're in. If we do the void and re-key process, seems to me that we would really be inflating our charges/adjustments since the primary adjustment has already been taken one time. We're still tossing this around...
...and this will be exactly why physicians may refuse new Medicare patients. I just saw on the news the other day where one of the Mayo clinics will no longer see Medicare patients....
If you don't use consult codes for non-Medicare primaries, how would they pay? If there is already an admit code submitted by the actual admitting MD they won't be paying another admit code...unless everyone is going to recognize the AI modifier, which I doubt because no one else is not recognizing consult codes. Everything I've read indicates AI is a Medicare only modifier...the no consult code issue is a Medicare only issue.
When it was first proposed to drop consultations, I was all for it because it's so hard to get the docs to follow the rules...but this is truly a mess. Thank you CMS.
If you don't use consult codes for non-Medicare primaries, how would they pay? If there is already an admit code submitted by the actual admitting MD they won't be paying another admit code...unless everyone is going to recognize the AI modifier, which I doubt because no one else is not recognizing consult codes. Everything I've read indicates AI is a Medicare only modifier...the no consult code issue is a Medicare only issue.
When it was first proposed to drop consultations, I was all for it because it's so hard to get the docs to follow the rules...but this is truly a mess. Thank you CMS.