Wiki Telephone conversations

[smartcoder]

Trying to find out the best way to bill out for a very time consuming patient who takes forever over the phone and the provider has been spending lot of time talking to the lab/radiologist office and back n forth with the patient. The patient was not admitted in the hospital but seen in the office multiple times this week. Not sure if 99495 or 99441 can be billable. E/M codes can be tricky. Need some help please.

 

[CodingKing]

99495 is only post discharge so it would not be applicable
99441 would not be billable because of all the office visits during the week. You can consider the phone discussion with the patient into the leveling of the office visits.

 

[ellzeycoding]

You can consider the phone discussion with the patient into the leveling of the office visits.

Just curious? Under what E/M guidelines would these non-face-to-face phone conversations count towards the level of an office visit?

 

[CodingKing]

Just curious? Under what E/M guidelines would these non-face-to-face phone conversations count towards the level of an office visit?

I could just be misinterpreting the AMA guidelines surrounding telephone calls:

[FONT=&quot]If the telephone service ends with a decision to see the patient within 24 hours or next available urgent visit appointment, the code is not reported; rather the encounter is considered part of the pre-service work of the subsequent E/M service, procedure, and visit.

[/FONT]

 

[ellzeycoding]

Gotcha.

Just wanted to make sure there wasn't some rule in the E/M guidelines I was missing. Thanks for clarifying!

 

[daedolos]

I could use this tidbit. We all have those patients that are calling a lot. Thanks, CodingKing!

Peace
@_*