Medicare released an article titled correct date of service for specific services. They address surgical pathology and date of service when not billing globally and only billing professional component. It states if the provider did not perform a global service and instead performed only one component, the date of service fore the professional component would be the date the review and interpretation is completed. Our compliance department agreed we would use the sign out date on our pathology reports which is when the pathologist has completed their interpretation and we bill the professional component from the surgical pathology report. Prior to this there is not much information on what date of service to use for surgical pathology professional component billing. Mostly it is about laboratory/clinical billing and technical component. We used to use the date received as our date of service and that would help us determine the place of service. If the patient was an inpatient when the specimen was removed then we billed with place of service 21. If the patient was an outpatient at the hospital we are associated with then we bill with the 22 outpatient. We do have some cases where specimens are removed in a clinic out patient office and in those cases we use the 11 place of service. Now our billers want to go by the new date of service which the interpretation is usually completed after the patient was an inpatient or an outpatient. Doesn't seem right to bill everything with an 11 code like they are. I think it should back to when the specimen was received and where the patient was located at the time of surgical specimen was obtained is what the place of service should be. Thoughts? comments? anyone see something published that better helps determine this? Thank you, Tamra