jdibble
True Blue
I previously worked in NJ as an auditor and physician educator for a hospital owned physician practice and when I left (January 2014) we were still billing commercial insurances for consults. I recently started working for a hospital owned physician practice in FL as a coder/auditor and am confused about consult codes for commercial carriers. I have been assigning consult codes for patient's with commercial insurance and now the billing company is sending them back saying those codes are not valid.
Did I miss something in the past few months? Have all insurances stopped accepting consult codes? If not, does anyone know which ones still accept them or how I would go about finding that information? And if some insurances still do accept the consult codes, do you know if they will pay for more than one Initial Inpatient visit if it gets billed as that rather than a consult? Or an outpatient visit code for Observation patients?
I am confused now on how to code these visits so any guidance or help on where to get answers would be appreciated!
Thanks,
Did I miss something in the past few months? Have all insurances stopped accepting consult codes? If not, does anyone know which ones still accept them or how I would go about finding that information? And if some insurances still do accept the consult codes, do you know if they will pay for more than one Initial Inpatient visit if it gets billed as that rather than a consult? Or an outpatient visit code for Observation patients?
I am confused now on how to code these visits so any guidance or help on where to get answers would be appreciated!
Thanks,