tci Medicare Compliance & Reimbursement - 2010 Issue 2

CONSULT ELIMINATION: New Modifier AI Allows Multiple Docs to Bill Initial Hospital Care

Modifier AI will denote the primary physician of record, now that consult coding is a thing of the past. Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) will no longer reimburse you for consultations effective Jan. 1, 2010, but your physicians will still collect for initial inpatient visits -- even if they didn't admit the patient -- thanks to a new modifier. In the past, only the admitting physician reported initial hospital care codes (99221-99223), and specialists who saw the patient separately often billed inpatient consults.New way: Now that Medicare won't recognize the consult codes, multiple physicians may report...

To read the full article, sign in and subscribe to tci Medicare Compliance & Reimbursement.

Thank you for choosing Find-A-Code, please Sign In to remove ads.