Practice Management Alert

Reader Questions:

Check Supervision Requirements Before Billing 'Incident To'

Published on Mon Aug 16, 2010

Question: Can I bill for an NP's services without a physician in the building? The doctor is on call and is reachable by phone but is not physically in the building.

Massachusetts Subscriber

Answer: You can bill for the services, but how you bill them depends on the payer you are billing the service to, since different payers have different rules about how and when you can bill nonphysician practitioner (NPP) services. For a Medicare patient, you can only bill for your nurse practitioner's (NP's) services under her own national provider identifier (NPI) if the physician is not in the office. In order to bill "incident to" -- under the physician's NPI number -- you must have a supervising physician in direct supervision which means in the office suite, not just available by phone.

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