Pulmonology Coding Alert

Question: A private payer representative informed my physicians that they can bill for more than one subsequent hospital visit per day. For a second visit on the same day to an already admitted patient, the doctor should report the subsequent care code with modifier 25 to indicate a separate service, according to the representative. I consider 99231-99233 "per day" codes and teach my physicians to report one code per day. I always thought that if a pulmonologist has to see a patient more than one time per day, the pulmonologist uses a higher-level code based on time and complexity or uses the prolonged codes, as appropriate. Could you explain how to code multiple visits on subsequent care days? South Carolina Subscriber Answer: Per CPT guidelines, you would use only one subsequent care code (99231-99233, Subsequent hospital care, per day, for the evaluation and management of a patient ...). Yes, these [...]