tci General Surgery Coding Alert - 2011 Issue 5

You Be the Coder: E/M: Service Drives Critical Care

Question:After a patient with chest pain "coded" in the ER and was admitted to ICU, our surgeon saw the patient for a surgical consult. The patient was lethargic and a poor historian, so most of his information came from prior medical records. Our surgeon did not document time. Can we charge for critical care since the patient was in the ICU?North Carolina SubscriberAnswer:No -- you can't bill critical care simply because the place of service is the intensive care unit (ICU). The service you describe would be an inpatient consultation, such as 99251-99255 (Inpatient consultation for a new...

To read the full article, sign in and subscribe to tci General Surgery Coding Alert.


Leverage vital, to-the-point monthly guidance to boost your reporting accuracy and your coding know-how. We make it convenient for your team to stay informed, compliant, and profitable with a subscription to TCI’s General Surgery Coding Alert.

  • Current newsletters added each month
  • Fully searchable archives - over 2100 articles
  • ALL years/issues back to 1999 organized by year and issue
  • Codes mentioned in articles are linked to Code Information pages
  • Code Information pages link back to related articles
Access to this feature is available in the following products:
  • tci General Surgery Coding Alert +Archives

demo
request yours today
 subscribe
start today
 newsletter
free subscription

Thank you for choosing Find-A-Code, please Sign In to remove ads.