Wiki Billing for Palliative care

[skendall]

I am new to PC billing and need clarification on determining diagnosis. We bill for both Hospice and Palliative Care. I am being instructed to put ALL diagnosis listed in the patient's history on the HCFA, just like in Hospice billing. Is this correct? My thought is you would only code for the problem(s) that are pertinent to the visit. Any help with this would be appreciated.

 

[trarut]

When I was doing Palliative Care billing, I only used the Z code for a palliative encounter and the diagnosis codes relevant to that day's visit.

 

[skendall]

When I was doing Palliative Care billing, I only used the Z code for a palliative encounter and the diagnosis codes relevant to that day's visit.

Thank you. That is the way I'm leaning.

 

[trarut]

Happy to help! We were very particular about how the codes were sequenced for those visits because we had two oncologists with sub-specialties in Palliative Care who ran that clinic. It was very important to differentiate their visits from any other visit the patient may have had that day. They never saw their own patients in the PC clinic and never had office hours for their oncology patients on the same day they did the PC clinic.

As I recall, the only issues we had were a few payers not accepting the Z51.5 code.