Bhignojos
New
At my CAH, we have a rural health clinic that brings us specimens and we either perform it here or send it out to Quest/LabCorp. The lab is charging patients for a "storage and handling fee" using the CPT code for the actual procedure. This was recently sent back by billing stating that these are duplicate charges because Quest/LabCorp billed for these CPT codes also. We know that we need to change the CPT codes to reflect a "storage and handling fee", but is this right for the lab to be charging for that? They were thinking of using CPT 99000, but I don't know if that would be accurate. Should the clinic be charging 99000? What should the lab be charging, if anything? All they do is get the specimen ready for Quest, and Quest comes to pick them up. They said they are charging the patient a handling fee to compensate for the charge that Quest charges.
Thoughts?
Thank you!
Thoughts?
Thank you!