Medicare Compliance & Reimbursement

Plus: CPT clarifies how you should calculate time when using it to pick an E/M code. Effective on Jan. 1, you have new offerings when it comes to reporting subsequent observation care, thanks to the addition of 99224-99226 to CPT 2011. Just how CMS wants you to report these new codes is still up in the air thanks to a dearth of transmittals on the topic, but read on if you'd like to get some guidance that CPT Editorial Committee members recently provided. Subsequent observation care begins after the initial observation care date of service, said Peter A. Hollmann, MD, vice chair of the CPT Editorial Panel, during his presentation on E/M, Vaccines, and Time-Based Codes at the AMA CPT Symposium in Chicago. You should not report subsequent observation care on the same date as initial observation care codes (99218-99220), nor can you report observation services on the same date [...]