Rejoice in New Year's Liberalized Non-Face-to-Face Prolonged Services
Published on Sun Nov 01, 2009
Looser guidelines will let you count work spread over days. Groaning thinking of all the time you'll never capture for complex cases requiring extensive pre-visit services? CPT 2010 brings you hope. Guideline revisions "liberalize prolonged non-face-toface services codes," reports Richard Tuck, MD, FAAP, pediatrician at PrimeCare of Southeastern Ohio in Zanesville. "This CPT change is a really good one." Think 99358, +99359 on Non-E/M Day For 2010, you can count indirect prolonged service time that occurs around the date of the E/M service. "Under the old definition, the non-face-to-face service had to be the day of the E/M," Tuck explains. Be careful: Prolonged service codes 99358 (Prolonged evaluation and management service before and/or after direct [face-to-face] patient care; first hour) and +99359 (... each additional 30 minutes [List separately in addition to code for prolonged physician service]) still have to relate to an E/M service that involves face-to-face patient contact. [...]