# Cardiac Anesthesia Billing Problem! Help!!!!



## indanesthesia (Apr 9, 2010)

We are the cardiac anesthesia for our town.  We currently service 2 hospitals.  I recevied a call from the CEO of one of the hospitals this morning with a question that stumped me.

He wanted to know if we were currently billing insurance for "Standby Call".  Which is something I have not heard of and obviously do not bill for, cause I didnt know it existed.

He is under the impression that when the cath lab gets a patient that may or may not need heart surgery and they page the cardiologists to put them on standby, that we as anesthesia group should bill for being put on standby.  

Does anyone know if there is such a code and if so, how do you bill when you technically dont have a patient to link it to.?  Help I am so confused

Thank you so much and your help is appreciated!!!

Amanda


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## NIENAJADLY (Apr 9, 2010)

*Standby*

Amanda,

There is a standby code 99360 that you can use.  It must be at least 30 minutes of standby, and the doc can't be doing anything else during that time.  The code is for each 30 minutes.  *"Physician standby service, requiring prolonged physician attendance, each 30 minutes (eg, operative standby, standby for frozen section, for cesarean/high risk delivery, for monitoring EEG"*  I'm not sure how many carriers would pay for this so you'd need to check it out.

Hope that helps.  

Kellie


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## indanesthesia (Apr 9, 2010)

thank you Kellie!  Thank you very much...I am going to get right on that and check it out.

Do you know if there is a certain document you have to provide for proof of the 3o minutes or does the dr, just need to make a dictation or what?


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## hgolfos (Apr 9, 2010)

Amanda,

I agree with Kellie, but go over the CPT billing guidelines carefully, because there is some criteria you would have to meet.  Documentation of a physician request for anesthesia to be on standby is one requirement.  Also, you absolutely would have to have a specific patient that the anesthesiologist is on standby for.  So in the scenario above, if the cardiologist thinks he/she will need an MDA he/she should request it in writing (physician orders which have to be timed and dated) and then your physicians need to document the time and that they were not seeing any other patients during that period, this can be documented in progress notes, or dictated.


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