Wiki 2 E/M visits on same day

[misstigris]

I have a scenario where one doctor saw a new patient in the office, ordered labs and an xray and coded it as 99203. The patient went for the xray, and the imaging dept called and advised pt should have a CT. The original doctor, ok'd the CT and requested that the patient be seen back in the office (same day), however, she was out of the office that afternoon, and patient had to be seen by a different doctor within the practice. The second doctor wants to bill a 99213... how do we get that paid?? I haven't found a modifier to use that best describes the scenario... Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

[sbicknell]

This all took place the same day?

If so, then basically Dr B is filling in and acting as Dr A. The afternoon encounter is a continuation of Dr A's morning encounter. For coding I suggest rolling both encounters into one E&M code under Dr A

Its just the same if you went to the Ortho, he evals and says "go get xrays and bring the films back". You wouldn't expect an OV charge before the xray and another OV charge after the xray

How Dr B gets "credit" for his workload is a separate issue and probably the Practice Manager is going to have to look and see how that's to be handeled