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Here's a quick rundown on an evaluation & management service item that could cause delays if you are not up to speed on how to report phone use. Scenario: A physician told my surgeon that he is getting payment from his contractor for telephone calling codes. My surgeon would like to start using these codes too. So does Medicare shell out money for telephone calls? Well, Medicare considers telephone call codes 99441-99443 to be non covered services. You can find a code's status in column D of the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule. The good news is your physician is technically getting paid for telephone calls made in relation to performed office visits. The physician work resulting from telephone calls is taken to be an integral part of the pre-service and post-service work of other physician services, and the fee schedule amount for the latter services already includes payment for the telephone calls. The relative value units (RVUs) for office visits include time for work that's spent before and after the visit on items like pulling the chart, reviewing lab results, and calling the patient. As the fee schedule includes relative values for 99441-99443, some private and other public payers may pay for the codes; however remember that the guidelines are very specific for reporting these codes. The patient must be established to the practice, must have initiated the call to the physician, and the information discussed cannot be directly related to a visit seven or les days prior to the phone call. What's more, the call cannot happen when the patient makes an appointment to see the physician regarding the health issue within a day's time. For more on phone call pay and for other specialty-specific articles to assist your neurosurgery coding, sign up for a good coding resource like Coding Institute.
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