tci General Surgery Coding Alert - 2004 Issue 6

Get ABNs, or Risk Picking Up Patient Tabs

Without ABNs, unpaid Medicare bills may become your problem If you aren't obtaining advance beneficiary notices (ABNs) from patients who undergo treatments that Medicare may not deem medically necessary, your general surgery office could end up picking up the tab on scads of uncovered or partially covered services. "An ABN is a form that an office treating a Medicare patient has the patient sign if the office is unsure whether Medicare will pay for a certain service," says Kathryn Cianciolo, RHIA, CCS, CCS-P, a coding consultant for more than 20 years from Waukesha, Wis. Cianciolo says that with...

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