Wiki Service Date for Professional Fee

[mwiggs]

I am looking for the 'official' guidelines for what is the appropriate service date for professional fees when the technical portion of the exam was performed on a different date?

Example: Chest xray performed on 1/1/09 and facility bills

Report was not completed and signed until 1/2/09

What should be the service date for the profee?

 

[mwiggs]

If you don't know where I can find the regulations/guidelines then please just tell me how you do it. Do you use the same date of service that the exam was performed on? Or do you use the date of service the physician read & signed the exam?

 

[Chanke]

You use the date the test was done, regardless of when the Dr reads the results. At least that's how we do it.

 

[SCanterbury]

Per the June 2003 CPT Assistant:

"The appropriate date to report [a code for prolonged recording] is the date that the information is available for interpretation (ie, the date the recording device is removed).

The date of the [physician's] interpretation can vary depending on the physician, and does not reflect the date the device concluded recording the data."

Based on the above, I would use the date that the physician service was provided as your date of service for the professional component of an x-ray if you are coding for the physician. If he waited two weeks to interpret something and write the report, then this date two weeks later is used for his charge, as that is the date of his report.

Seth Canterbury, CPC, ACS-EM