Patient Transfers
Hospitalist billing depends on several factors. Know your role and avoid common mistakes Patient transfers can occur for many reasons: advanced technological services required, health insurance coverage, or a change in the level of care, to name a few. Patient care that is provided in the acute-care setting does not always terminate with discharge to home. Frequently, hospitalists are involved in patient transfers to another location to receive additional services: intrafacility (a different unit or related facility within the same physical plant) or interfacility (geographically separate facilities). The hospitalist must identify his or her role in the transfer and the patient’s new environment.
Physician billing in the transferred setting depends upon several factors:1
- Shared or merged medical record;
- The attending of record in each setting;
- The requirements for care rendered by the hospitalist in each setting; and
- Service dates.
Intrafacility Initial Service
Let’s examine a common example: A hospitalist serves as the “attending of record” in an inpatient hospital where acute care is required for an 83-year-old female with hypertension and diabetes who sustained a left hip fracture. The hospitalist plans to discharge the patient to the rehabilitation unit. After transfer, the rehabilitation physician becomes the attending of record, and the hospitalist might be asked to provide ongoing care for the patient’s hypertension and diabetes.
What should the hospitalist report for the initial post-transfer service? The typical options to consider are:2
- Inpatient consultation (99251-99255);
- Initial hospital care (99221-99223); and
- Subsequent hospital care (99231-99233).
Report a consultation only if the rehab attending requests an opinion or advice for an unrelated, new condition instead of previously treated conditions, and the requesting physician’s intent is for opinion or advice on management options rather than the a priori intent for the hospitalist to assume the patient’s medical care. If these requirements are met, the hospitalist may report an inpatient consultation code (99251-99255). Alternatively, if the intent or need represents a continuity of medical care provided during the acute episode of care, report the most appropriate subsequent hospital care code (99231-99233) for the hospitalist’s initial rehab visit and all follow-up services.
Initial hospital care (99221-99223) codes can only be reported for Medicare beneficiaries in place of consultation codes (99251-99255), as Medicare ceased to reimburse consultation codes.3 Most other payors who do not recognize consultation services only allow one initial hospital care code per hospitalization, reserved for the attending of record.
Interfacility Initial Service
Hospitalist groups provide patient care and coverage in many different types of facilities. Confusion often arises when the “attending of record” during acute care and the “subacute” setting (e.g. long-term acute-care hospital) are two different hospitalists from the same group practice. The hospitalist receiving the patient in the transfer facility may decide to report subsequent hospital care (99231-99233), because the group has been providing ongoing care to this patient. In this scenario, the hospitalist group could be losing revenue if an admission service (99221-99223) was not reported.