Q: If a patient in the emergency department (ED) leaves without being seen (LWBS) by a physician/nonphysician practitioner, should we have facility charges?
Q: For patients in the emergency department who present with a pulmonary concern, would a pulse oximetry reading performed after the initial intake reading be considered separately billable?
Q: If an anesthesiologist performs a presurgical or postsurgical block for pain control and it is performed in a holding area rather than in the operating room (OR), can we bill a separate facility (technical) fee for that? Or would this be bundled with OR services?
Q: My team and I are responsible for clinical documentation improvement (CDI). We’re considering adding a reconciliation element to our CDI review process next year. In your experience, what’s been the biggest benefit of performing reconciliation on charts?
Q: We are a critical access hospital (CAH). We provide smoking cessation therapy (CPT codes 99406-99407) in our cardiac rehab department. The documentation is done and signed by a respiratory therapist (RT), and we are currently billing this as a professional charge (on a UB-04 with revenue code 0981). My question is, can we bill this on a UB-04 as a facility charge only and still allow our RT or other ancillary staff to perform it?
Q: How do we to handle charges for donor-related services when the donor is an unsuccessful match? Should the charges for services provided to a potential donor who is an unsuccessful match also be included on the transplant recipient claim or should they be adjusted and just included on the cost report?
Q: We are experiencing post-payment audits that result in denials of inpatient claims. Our coders and CDI leaders are vehement that the patient meets MCG and/or coding guidelines, but the payer is using clinical results from the patient as their justification. It seems as if they are ignoring all established guidelines. If these are inappropriate denials, how do we fight them?
