Anesthesia Coding Alert

Question:

Delaware Subscriber

You are correct. CPT^® offers three telephone service codes:

Although reporting 99443 might seem like the right choice because the physician spent 22 minutes on the phone discussing the patient's care, the code descriptors for these codes specify that you cannot report 99441-99443 within seven days of an E/M service. Therefore, you cannot bill for this telephone call.

Pointer: You can consider the telephone conversation between a provider and patient as a factor when determining a service level for any follow-up related E/M service -- if your physician's documentation showed how the telephone conversation affected the key components of history, exam, and medical decision making for the future E/M service. You can fold the phone call time into the medical decision making (MDM) for the follow-up service and, depending on the documented nature of the presenting problem, level of history, or exam, this additional time may help you be able to code a higher-level E/M service.