Mchurch78
New
Our organization started an outpatient Cardiology department about a year ago, and our cardiologists are sub-contracted through a different company and rotate through, but we do all the billing.
I currently have a cardiologist who is refusing to write any kind of a report, even in the patient's office visit note, surrounding the EKG stating he only has to initial the tracing for the professional component to be billable with the technical component (the machine is in-house). "In my 40 years practicing, I've never had anyone question the validity of that, and there's never a separate report written."
Now, we're new to Cardiology coding, but EVERYTHING I've read says "interpretation and report" are required to bill the professional component. I have tons of documentation surrounding this, from CMS, AAPC, and other physician's organizations. All the documentation states that a separate report (from the tracing) must exist in the patient's chart, even if it's just included in the chart note, and simply stating "EKG normal" is insufficient. I've presented all this documentation to him, and his answer was that I need to "check with other organizations to see how they're billing without a report."
So, please, HELP!! Are we in the wrong here? If not, can anyone provide me with some real-world samples? I've been fighting this for a week and I'm exasperated.
Thank you for any help you can offer!
I currently have a cardiologist who is refusing to write any kind of a report, even in the patient's office visit note, surrounding the EKG stating he only has to initial the tracing for the professional component to be billable with the technical component (the machine is in-house). "In my 40 years practicing, I've never had anyone question the validity of that, and there's never a separate report written."
Now, we're new to Cardiology coding, but EVERYTHING I've read says "interpretation and report" are required to bill the professional component. I have tons of documentation surrounding this, from CMS, AAPC, and other physician's organizations. All the documentation states that a separate report (from the tracing) must exist in the patient's chart, even if it's just included in the chart note, and simply stating "EKG normal" is insufficient. I've presented all this documentation to him, and his answer was that I need to "check with other organizations to see how they're billing without a report."
So, please, HELP!! Are we in the wrong here? If not, can anyone provide me with some real-world samples? I've been fighting this for a week and I'm exasperated.
Thank you for any help you can offer!