Ophthalmology and Optometry Coding Alert

Determining whether a patient is in a Part A or Part B stay is your key to proper reimbursement.When your ophthalmologist sees a nursing facility patient in your office, your challenge is collecting proper reimbursement for those services.The problem: A patient's nursing facility NF status -- whether he is in a Part A-covered stay or a Part Bcovered stay -- determines how you should be billing for your ophthalmologist's services, and if you're not following consolidated billing rules you'll continue to sacrifice part of your fees.Good news: If you follow three steps, you'll be well on your way toward proper billing and payment every time.1. Understand Consolidated Billing and How It Affects Your Practice Before you can start billing for services your ophthalmologist performs for nursing facility patients, you need to figure out what consolidated billing really is and why it matters to your billing process.How it works: "Medicare's 'consolidated billing' is [...]