June 10, 2021 Question: Our physician diagnosed non-displaced middle phalangeal fractures on the right index, middle, ring, and little fingers on a high school student. The physician applied a short arm cast as treatment and wants to report CPT code 26720 four times. I explained to the physician that she may only report this code...
May 27, 2021 Question: Our practice understands how to report shared services in the hospital when the physician assistant and physician both see the patient on the same day. My question, and I have not found anyone who is able to answer is, how do we bill when a hospital-employed physician assistant and our physician...
May 13, 2021 Question: Our surgeon documented an excision and curettage of a bone cyst from the tibia and the fibula near the ankle joint. I am looking at CPT code 27635 and wondering if this is the correct code and if I report it once or twice. Answer: CPT code 27635 (Excision or curettage...
April 29, 2021 Question: I am new to coding and have a question. I remember studying about “separate procedures” and have my first operative note that includes a code that has this in the code definition. The surgeon performed a diagnostic arthroscopy (CPT code 29870) and confirmed the meniscal tear prior to proceeding with the...
April 15, 2021 Question: In the new guidelines, how does Time affect billing for a teaching physician’s E/M service when the resident spends a great deal of time with the patient? Answer: Good question! CMS reimburses for the services of the attending physician, not the resident in training. Only the time of teaching physician would...
April 1, 2021 Question: A new patient presents with a CD of an MRI that was performed at an outside institution and was read by the radiologist. There was no report with the CD. If one of my physicians reads the MRI can we bill for the second reading? Answer: No, reading the MRI that...
March 18, 2021 Question: We are switching to a new EHR system. We have not always had great compliance with our providers documenting what we feel needs to be documented so we want to do it right. Are you able to advise what should be included in the medical record when the provider administers medications,...
March 4, 2021 Question: We have a surgeon who performed an ORIF of an open tibia fracture and placed bone filler allograft in an area where the surgeon felt there was a small bone void. Is this work considered bundled or not? Neither the surgeon or I think it is billable but thought we should...
February 18, 2021 Question: Our orthopaedic sports medicine physician recently injected blood at a tendon insertion site for treatment of tendonitis. The staff drew the blood from the antecubital fossa and gave the syringe to the surgeon. The surgeon said it is not “PRP” as he did not centrifuge the blood and create a concentrate...
February 4, 2021 Question: One of our physician assistants’ saw one of our established Medicare in the emergency room for increasing pain in the area being treated by the physician. The physician assistant made no changes to the plan of care established by the physician. Our physician assistant submitted this as an incident to service...
