Wiki billing hospital discharge

[mrolf]

We have a patient in the hospital that was seen by the on-call physician on the weekend. Patient was seen and discharged by the on-call physician, but the patient's regular physician is doing the hospital discharge summary. Both physicians are of the same family practice group. Can we bill the discharge services to the physician doing the discharge summary even if that physician did not actually see or exam the patient or does the on-call physician bill for the discharge services. Please advise. Thanks.

 

[acbarnes]

The physician who actually performed the discharge (wrote the discharge orders, final exam, prescriptions, etc) bills. 99238 and 99239 are based on the discharge day management time (30 minutes or >30 min). If the MD dictating the discharge summary did not go to the floor and perfrom these tasks (his name will be on the orders for that day) he cannot bill under his name because he spent no time on the floor.

Anna Barnes CPC, CEMC