Practice Management Alert

Question: I work in a general and laparoscopic surgeon's office. When he assists other surgeons we obtain the billing information from the other surgeon's coders to bill as the assist. Sometimes there is incorrect billing pertaining to the CPT codes and ICD-9 codes billed, according to the documentation from the operative report. There is contact made to have them verify and correct, but it is not always followed through with by the lead surgeon's office. In effort to get the claim submitted in a timely matter I have submitted the claim for my doctor as the assist. I have done it in two ways: 1) submitted as billed by the lead surgeon, making notes on the account for the errors/problems and 2) submitting the claim with the correct billing information. What is the correct way to handle this problem?New York SubscriberAnswer: You should never knowingly send in the wrong codes [...]