Think emergency department (ED) physicians don't do consultations? Think again! ED doctors do consults more often than you-d expect, Caral Edelberg, president of medical management resources for TeamHealth in Jacksonville, FL revealed in her talk, -Advanced ED Compliance Coding Essentials-Physician,- at the 2007 AAPC conference in Seattle.
Warning: Some ED physicians incorrectly think that if the patient's regular physician sends the patient to the ED, it's automatically a consult. This would make almost every ED visit a consult, but it's not correct, Edelberg warned.
Opportunity: However, sometimes other physicians will call ED physicians up to the inpatient department to render an opinion about the status of a patient, and then perform intubation or another procedure. In this case, the ED physician should bill a consult, she maintained.
Note: Because the service described above isn't happening in the ED, you wouldn't use the ED as the place of service (POS), Edelberg said.