Wiki meet and greet - code for a doctor's office

[cdr4life]

Hello, I need some help from my fellow coders please. I code for a doctor's office in Arizona. A patient came to our office recently for a "meet and greet" with the Doctor. That's all the exam had in the chart note. Would this be considered a nurse visit since that's all the doctor put in the exam was "meet and greet with patient, patient declined exam"? Please let me know what you think I should do.

Thank you,

 

[cjhalk@yahoo.com]

I am not sure you can bill or code for this. What is the medical necessity of the meet and greet? I think this is just a courtesy. With a 99211 you still have to have a presenting problem. Additionally, the nurse visit ? 99211 ? is for an established patient. This patient is not an established patient.

Also, think about it this way, if you code an established patient you lose the ability to code the actual future appointment as a new patient which has more value.

On a personal note, I think I would be pretty irritated if I just went to meet my doctor and got stuck with a bill for doing absolutely nothing.