Wiki Reduce billed amount for assistant surgeon?

[bridgettemartin]

When you bill for assistant surgeon services (modifier -80 or -81), do you reduce your charge amount?
Wondering what other practices do in this case, as a full charge overly inflates A/R, when we know going in that we will only get a small percentage of the total charge amount billed.

 

[sheardmd]

We do. We do 20% of fee for NP/PA or 25% for MD. We haven't found any payors that reimburse more than that.

 

[AlaskanCoder]

I do coding for a third party biller and we have a few different kinds of surgeons. We do not reduce the assistant fees when we bill, but we take the assistant surgeon reduction after adjudication (down to a 20% of our original charge, only). We've had some payers pay more than 20 or 25% of our billed amount, because the payer's allowable is higher than ours.

___________________
Karen Hill, CPC, CPB, CPMA