Hospital

“My group takes call at our local hospital, and this necessitates seeing patients in the emergency room (ER) on occasion. We are not all in agreement regarding what E/M codes should be used in this scenario. We have come up with different encounters: -A patient seen in the ER. The patient is then discharged to follow up for outpatient care. -A patient is seen in the ER and then admitted for continued medical treatment. -A patient is seen in the ER and emergently taken straight to the operating room for surgical treatment. What E/M code series would you recommend using for these different scenarios? Thank you for the help!”

“After watching some E/M presentations, it was suggested that hospital consultations should be billed with CPT 99252-CPT 99255. When we billed these codes, our EMR system and our clearing house rejected the codes. They are saying effective 1/1/2010, CMS has announced that they will reject these codes. Are we billing the right codes?”