Otolaryngology Coding Alert
Don't Report VNG 'Incident To' When Audiologist Does the Test
Question: Can we bill a VNG as “incident to” a physician even when an audiologist performs the test?
Mississippi Subscriber
Answer: No, you cannot bill 92540 (Basic vestibular evaluation, includes spontaneous nystagmus test with eccentric gaze fixation nystagmus, with recording, positional nystagmus test, minimum of 4 positions, with recording, optokinetic nystagmus test, bidirectional foveal and peripheral stimulation, with recording, and oscillating tracking test, with recording) and 92543 (Caloric vestibular test, each irrigation [binaural, bithermal stimulation constitutes 4 tests], with recording) “incident to” a physician even when an audiologist performs the test. The government recognizes licensed audiologists as qualified health care providers and requires them to bill under their own NPI number.
No audiology services may be billed incident to for a Medicare patient, but you need to find out what non-Medicare payers allow. Some non-Medicare payers do not credential the audiologist, so the practice can only bill the audiologist services as incident to. If the payer does not follow Medicare’s rules, get the rules for billing audiology services in writing.
Otolaryngology Coding Alert
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