Inpatients Claims

light_coder wrote on Wednesday, October 01, 2008:

How do we file claims for inpatients?

One of my customers has patients (I’ll call them patients_x) that she only sees at a hospital and patients (patients_y) that she sees in her practice, but that she admits to a hospital.

a) Do we need to create each hospital as a different facility and pick one from the Facility drop down list when we’re creating the encounter for that visit?

b) Is it done the same way whether it’s patients_x or patients_y?

c) What’s the purpose of the Onset/hospitalization date field?

Any help is always appreciated.

Thanks.

Jude.

gutiersa wrote on Wednesday, October 01, 2008:

a. yes
b. yes
c. for inpatient visits you must report the date of hospitalization and the date of discharge to get paid. in fact, for medicare in my area at least you cannot send the bill till there is a discharge date. (NJ)

xiaoanri wrote on Wednesday, October 01, 2008:

I have another question regarding inpatient claims.  Sometimes we get called to see inpatients as consult.  I have noticed in general the billing software will enter the information (name and NPI#) of the physician who rendered the service in the space where the requsting (who requested the consult) physcian should be entered  (I believe it is Item 17 or 18 in the HCFA form).

I have not had a lot of experience in this regard.  Would this be working as it is now, or am I missing the place to enter a requesting physicians info? 

Thank you very much.

Hui

light_coder wrote on Thursday, October 02, 2008:

Dr. G,

How is c (above) done? There is only one Onset/Hospitalization Date field. Where does one enter the date of discharge?
Inpatients seen as consult, like Hui is saying, are they equivalent to what I called patients_x (above)?

Thanks again.