General Surgery Coding Alert

How can you code for optimal reimbursement if the surgeon sees a patient in the emergency department (ED) and subsequently admits him as an inpatient? Although general coding principles prohibit reporting two E/M services on the same date, you can get reimbursed for the total work the surgeon provides. Report Only One E/M Code Surgeons often see patients in the ED and, after examination, admit them to the hospital. The pre-admission examination can be extensive, lasting an hour or more in some cases. But under most payers' guidelines (and as explicitly stated in the Medicare Carriers Manual, section 15047[G]), the surgeon can report only an initial hospital care code (99221-99223) if the ED visit and subsequent hospital admission occur on the same day.
 
"You can't bill for two E/M codes on the same day. Most carriers will only pay for one service, and physicians generally choose the code that has the higher reimbursement. That's usually the inpatient history and physical," says Barry Haitoff, president of Medical Management Corporation of America, a billing and management firm in Brewster, N.Y.
 
And, the initial hospital care codes include any care provided elsewhere on that date, according to CPT: "When the patient is admitted to the hospital as an inpatient in the course of an encounter in another site of service (that is, hospital emergency department, observation status in a hospital, physician's office, nursing facility), all [E/M] services that the physician provides in conjunction with that admission are part of the initial hospital care when performed on the same date as the admission."
 
But you may consider the physician's work in the emergency room when determining which level of code to use for the admission. "The inpatient-care level of service reported by the admitting physician should include the services related to the admission he or she provided in the other sites of services as well as in the inpatient setting," CPT says. In other words, there is usually overlap between the ED examination and the examination, history and medical decision-making (MDM) associated with the inpatient admission, and you may therefore consider the work involved in the preadmission ED visit when selecting among the initial care codes.


If You Document It, Use It When you select among the initial hospital care codes, documentation is the key to supporting your code selection. If you don't document a service or procedure, the payer will assume the doctor didn't do it. "Medical decision-making is generally the deciding factor when choosing an initial care code because even the lowest-level service requires a 'detailed or comprehensive' history and examination," says Cindy Parman, CPC, CPC-H, co-owner of Coding Strategies Inc., an Atlanta-based coding and reimbursement firm. When determining the level of MDM, the physician must [...]