Wiki Pediatric Critical Care and patient passing away the same day....OK to bill for C.C?

[Porter_kd]

My question is that the patient was in critical care from 12:16pm and in the note, the patient passed away from a large left cerebellar bleed at 7:27pm, since CPT 99476 is an all day critical care code, can the doctor still bill for this? Or does he bill for the discharge summary(death summary)-99238 or 99239 based on the time he noted in the dictation? What I am getting stumped on is that these codes(99468-99476) are all day critical care codes. If the patient passed away during that same day, can you still give credit for an all day critical care code?

Any help is appreciated
Thanks, Kimberly.

 

[cgaston]

I think the code has "per day" written in it to show that it is only billable once a day no matter how many times you see the patient. Since the provider provided critical care services on this date I would bill for the critical care visit and not the discharge.

 

[Porter_kd]

Makes sense. Some of our doctors code the discharge and some code critical care.