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Consultation Codes: Medicare Sends A Message To Specialists

A study published in this week’s Archives of Internal Medicine looked at so-called errors made in consultation code billing by specialists seeing patients at the request of a primary care practice in suburban Chicago. The methodology? Comparing the primary care office referral form with the specialist’s bill.
The author concludes that specialists are greatly overusing consultation codes in situations where a new patient visit would be more appropriate, to the tune of over half a billion dollars a year in Medicare payments, and suggests that it is time to reconsider the use of these codes. (Medicare, of course, has already come to the same conclusion, and beginning January 1 of this year, is no longer paying for consultation codes.)

There may be misuse of consultation codes going on, but this study does not necessarily prove that. The methodology does not include medical record review, the standard by which coding choices are verified or refuted, and relies entirely on the referring physician’s determination of what the specialist should be billing. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at The Blog that Ate Manhattan*

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