Orthopedic Coding Alert

Question: One of our surgeons consulted a Medicare patient in the hospital for a recurrent bone infection in the knee. This patient is three weeks out from hardware removal by another physician and was transferred from a smaller hospital to the one where my physician saw him. Which code should we bill for this service?

Wisconsin Subscriber

Answer: You can report a code from the inpatient consultation series (99251-99255). You should bill just one consult code from this range per admission, according to CPT guidelines. But you can report any additional visits to the patient in the hospital using the subsequent hospital care codes (99231-99233).