Wiki Pediatric initial hospital care

[pjordan73]

Hope you can help clarify: If a physician sees a newborn for a "normal initial visit", 99460, on day one. Can the physician (same one) also bill the subsequent visit, sick newborn, as an initial inpatient hospital care visit for day 2, 99222? Normally, I would bill this as a subsequent visit, 99232. Need clarification!!!

If there were two seperate physician's seeing the same newborn. Physician 1 sees the patient as sick with frequent monitoring,99477. The next day physician 2 sees the patient as a "normal" newborn and bills 99460. Can they bill for two initials since they are seperate physicians?

Thanks,

PJ

 

[FTessaBartels]

Only ONE initial visit

There can be only ONE initial hospital visit per stay. Whether it's the same physician or a different physician any visits other than the initial one are subsequent visits. (And if the child is critically ill the code is a "global" 24-hour code and only one physician per day will be able to code it.)

Hope that helps.

F Tessa Bartels, CPC, CEMC