Wiki G0447 - Intensive Behavioral Therapy for Obesity

[maine4me]

We are implementing a nutritional counselling program in our family practices, and there has been some discussion regarding the Intensive Behavioral Therapy for Obesity offered by Medicare. We have had some information from another dietitan who is performing these services as incident to, and I have clarified that this is appropriate. However, this person is stating that we can only bill 1 unit for this service. The code description states face-to face behavioral counseling for obesity, 15 minutes, so in my mind if the visit was 30 minutes in duration we should bill 2 units. I called our MAC (Novitas) and they had no information to clarify this. Has anyone had any experience that they would be willing to share?

 

[Zina]

obesity counseling

That's a very good question, I have no answer.
I do have another question regarding this subject. If a patient has a BMI of 30.75 at the time of the referral and then when she gets to the obesity counseling her BMI is only 28.82, is the service still billable to Medicare? And what do you use once the patient starts to lose weight and goes under the BMI 30, do you still use the original BMI to bill the service to Medicare? I can't find anything online to answer these questions.