General Surgery Coding Alert

Question: If a patient comes in for a follow-up and sees a nurse practitioner (NP), and the NP evaluates new patient complaints before the physician joins the encounter to discuss a new treatment plan, can I bill distinct time for both?

Answer: No. Time spent face-to-face in the room together with a provider only counts once; so if an NP spends 12 minutes with a patient and then the physician comes in for 18 minutes, the total time is 30 minutes.

While distinct time is the amount of time each provider spends working on the patient independently, if both the physician and the NP are seeing the patient simultaneously, then only one of them can count the time.

Typically, the physician will count the time, so the visit can be billed at the higher physician rate.

Rachel Dorrell, MA, MS, CPC-A, CPPM, Development Editor, AAPC