Don’t miss the May 23 webinar to satisfy your quest for more knowledge.
Patients who don’t have a health care provider in the hospital rely on OB hospitalists to respond to their emergencies and care for them round the clock. Because the hospitalist program is fairly new to the American hospital system, coding for this subspecialty could pose a bigger challenge.
The OB-GYN hospitalist program is making such positive impact on health care because it “enables patients to have emergent care for any type of OB/GYN emergency when their own physician is unavailable, says Lori Lynn Webb, CPC, CCS-P, CCP, CHDA, COBG, in her blog site Lori-Lynne’s Coding Coach Blog. Patients who think they may be in labor, or are in labor and close to delivery, will have an OB hospitalist waiting for them in the birth place area of the hospital. Other functions of an OB hospitalist include supporting local obstetricians as back-up for deliveries and emergency C-sections; and providing ancillary testing services such as fetal non-stress test and fetal ultrasound.
Coders, of course, should report these services in their claim. For E/M services, all facets of inpatient, outpatient hospital, emergency and office codes may be used. CPT procedures, on the other hand, include surgery, medicine, and radiology/ultrasound services, adds Webb in her blog.
Example: A pregnant woman reports to emergency labor and delivery where an OB hospitalist performs a fetal non-stress test to measure fetal well-being. You would report 59025 (Fetal non-stress test), appended by modifier 26 (Professional component) for the physician’s service. The hospital owns the equipment used for the test, and will report for that portion of the service.
OB-GYN encompasses several other ancillary services that are provided outside the global maternity package. Each service has its own coding rules and exceptions. To stay current, join a 90-minute educational discussion on May 23, 2012 at 12nn (ET) that will review OB ancillary service coding applications. The webinar “OB Ancillary Services — Are You Missing A Revenue Opportunity In Your Physician Based Billing?” will feature Lori Lynn Webb, CPC, CCS-P, CCP, CHDA, COBG, as speaker talking about — among others — the different OB ancillary services, their documentation requirements, and what diagnosis codes to include when reporting the procedures.
To register, get in touch with CodingCert.com’s career counselors at 866-458-2962 or send us an email.
