Ob-Gyn Coding Alert

Question: Due to the coronavirus, my hospital has created a Respiratory Care Clinic, and providers from different specialties are seeing patients. If our ob-gyn sees a patient in this clinic, should I consider this patient established if our ob-gyn has seen the patient before in the ob-gyn specialty?

New York Subscriber

Answer: You should ask yourself, “Has this patient received any face-to-face professional service from this ob-gyn provider or any member of this ob-gyn’s provider group (in the same specialty) in the past three years?”

If the answer is yes, then the patient is established for billing purposes—even if the patient was seen by your ob-gyn in the respiratory clinic.

If the answer is no, then she is his new patient.