Physician seeing hospital consults in office?

[Rgreen0118]

Our doctor is bringing some patients to the office from the hospital via wheelchair for consults ordered by other doctors. He is trying to save the time of going to the hospital by bringing the patient over to our office to see them.

I know that I cannot bill them out as "place of service" = office because it will deny. He is doing the dictation over at the hospital as if he saw them there.

Can I bill this out as under place of service "hospital" and cpt codes 99251-99255 even though he saw them in the office?

Is this wrong?

 

[krista2178@yahoo.com]

Wow... good question. I would think these would have to be billed out as office consults. My train of thought would be that the whole point of charging a hospital consult was that it was done in the hospital... if it wasn't done there I would be very leary of trying to bill it out as if it was. POS is POS and as you said, you can't change that I don't think an auditor would approve. But that is just my opinion... Any other takers??

 

[DeeCPC]

That is a new one. If he is going over to dictate why doesn't he see them there? Anyway...

I would not code this using hospital codes knowing the POS is not the hospital.

There may be a problem getting this paid with outpatient codes when the patient is still technically hospitalized. The patient has not been discharged and the hospitalists and possibly other providers are billing subsequent visits and eventually someone will bill a discharge AND in the middle of these hospital charges is an outpatient visit!

That's my take on it