Warm Handoff from primary care to behavioral health -Same Facility

[aenglebert@rmcl.org]

If a patient is being seen by their primary care physician and they feel the patient is in need of counseling- or in crisis, they will refer them to behavioral health and walk them over to meet the counselor. It is usually a courtesy visit to make the patient comfortable and the counselor just gets an introduction and a brief history and gives the patient documentation to fill out and sets an appointment for the intake. I know this is not a billable service from the behavioral health counselors side but they are asking if they can create an encounter to document what was said and done- any idea how they would code this encounter? There is a cpt code for psycotherapy referral.... 4062F.

 

[Pam Warren]

if you're not going to bill, there's no need to drop a category II code...it's not going to have a charge attached. they can create a nonbillable encounter and document whatever they want. You can 'drop' a no charge visit (whatever your organization uses for this.

 

[aenglebert@rmcl.org]

if you're not going to bill, there's no need to drop a category II code...it's not going to have a charge attached. they can create a nonbillable encounter and document whatever they want. You can 'drop' a no charge visit (whatever your organization uses for this.

thank you... I was not sure for documentation purposes if I needed to use anything or not!