Wiki Social Work/Warm Handoffs

[jenantho15@yahoo.com]

My clinic has hired an ASW to see our patients in our Medical Department for patients that need social work, warm handoffs, case management services. My understanding is that she'll be available for patients that need help finding housing, food, transportation, paperwork, dealing with anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts, etc. All this will be initiated by the provider who is seeing the patient and once the provider is done with the patient's visit they will do a "warm handoff" to the ASW to help with the above services. I know an ASW needs to have a supervising physician sign off on their records (which we have in place). We are in California. My question is, can we bill for the ASW services after the medical provider has just seen the patient and if so, what CPT code(s) would be used? Just to clarify these services will not be psychotherapy.

Any and all help is appreciated.

Thank You,
Jenna Glenn
jenna.glenn@scihp.org