Ob-Gyn Coding Alert

Question: One patient scheduled on the same day saw two different ob-gyns of the same practice for different and unrelated problems. I didn’t find anything in the CPT^® book that said we can’t bill two separate evaluation and management services (E/Ms) on the same day. But I remember reading somewhere that if the ob-gyns are from the same practice/ same specialty we cannot bill two E/Ms on same day, that we need to use both visits to calculate out one E/M visit. Is this correct?

Florida Subscriber

Answer: No, not if they are two entirely different problems. And hopefully both ob-gyns are not documenting the same medical decision making (MDM) or total time on the same date. Really, this kind of visit situation should be more the type where the patient is getting results for one problem, but evaluation for a different problem.

Warning: Many payers in an audit situation will take money back if the documentation looks odd. In other words, be cautious if you have two identical notes with only the reason for the visit being different.