Medicare Claims Processing Manual, Chapter 12, section 30.6.9.1.A states that Medicare Administrative Contractors do not pay for an ED visit by the same physician on the same date of service as an initial hospital care service “if a physician sees a patient in the emergency room and decides to admit the person to the hospital.” An emergency room consultation can be very confusing for people, says Thomas Kent, CMM, principal of Kent Medical Management in Dunkirk, Md. When a doctor sees a patient in the ER, many coders first reaction is to use the code for an emergency room visit (99281-99285, emergency department visit for the evaluation and management of a patient). But you may consider the physician's work in the emergency room when determining which level of code to use for the admission.

Understanding the Context

"The inpatient-care level of service reported by the admitting physician should include the services related to the admission he or she provided in the other sites of services as well as in the inpatient setting," CPT says. ED physicians (and non-physician practitioners authorized to provide emergency room services) who treat the fracture (as described in the second bullet) but do not provide follow-up care may submit a claim for the fracture treatment code with CPT® modifier 54. Example The patient has a metacarpal displaced fracture. As a Certified Professional Coder (CPC ®) who supports emergency department (ED) physicians, I am often asked how to code appropriately for the physician component of critical care services in the ED.

Key Insights

In response, I created these 10 commandments of critical care coding in the emergency room (ER). 1. Thou Shalt Know What Defines Critical Care CPT ® defines Critical Care Services (99291-99292 ... If a specialist, let's say Ortho doc, see's a patient in the Emergency Room for a consult, and then admits the patient from the ER right away, is this coded as an outpatient E/M or Inpatient E/M? My Orthopedic surgeons see patients in the ER, and when they admit the patient from the ER, they...

Final Thoughts

Emergency room services are addressed starting at the bottom of page 4, and it does say that both the ED physician and the consulting or personal physician should bill from the 99281-99285 code range - it is not limited to just the physician doing the ED workup. Thank you so much for sharing this. I was totally mistaken. Los Angeles Times: Primary Care, Urgent Care, and Emergency Care: Knowing Your Care Options