Anesthesia Coding Alert

Effective April 1, Medicare will base anesthesia reimbursement on the ZIP code where the practitioner provides the service. Services paid under the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule (MPFS) will be subject to jurisdictional payment to determine the correct payment locality, just as other specialties are.

You can submit claims with two places of service (POS), if one is the patient's home. Be sure to include the correct information for the additional POS in Item 32 on the CMS-1500 claim form. You can only enter one address in this box, which means you should submit multiple claims for services requiring two ZIP codes if you submit paper claims.

Electronic claims, however, can have any number of POS codes if you include a corresponding service facility location and address for each service. If you don't include individual location data, Medicare assumes that all services took place at the same location.