Patients who get a COVID-19 test, and nothing more, stay ‘new’ for next visit

Article Overview

This short coding article addresses patient status for evaluation and management billing in the context of COVID-19 testing workflows. It focuses on the distinction between testing-only encounters and encounters that involve professional services, helping coders and billing staff understand how those circumstances affect whether a later visit may be treated as new or established. The discussion is aimed at clinic administrators, coders, billers, and coding educators working with office-based testing and follow-up visits.