Wiki Normal Saline

[PeaPod1]

Our outpatient coding staff is new to billing outpatient infusion and we are confused on when to bill normal saline. Normal saline J codes are listed for us when running with therapeutic drugs and chemo and also on our drug charge sheet(being used to mix dry drugs to liquid in the pharmacy).

My understanding is that we can only bill for the actual infusion of normal saline when it is infused at prescribed rate/volume/time??

When can we bill for the actual product ie. J7040/J7050?

Any assistance is greatly appreciated.

 

[mjm41795]

If the Saline is incident to, it cannot be billed because it is bundled into the administration code. The only time I see fluids billed is when they are billed with hydration (96360 and 96361) codes.