Billing for CCUS?

[NewYorkDoctors]

hello

Is anyone here billing for ccus images ? I don’t be mean as an added revenue to ones own pocket persay but as a way to increase revenue to ones own division ?

We have a qpath storage system and have been writing templates notes into the chart.im still new so I haven’t gotten the chance to go around asking people about billing as of yet .

Any experiences ? I know cpt codes exist for thoracic Us and not to mentioned limited dvt duplex studies and limited echos

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[Hernandez]

For now, outside of u/s procedures, I just roll ccus into pe/cct. The guys at chest argue it shouldn't be billed separately; I think their reasoning was weak ("if we bill bill what we do they'll take it away!") I need better storage and I might but suspect it would cause specialty fights at my location

 

[tartesos]

Other than slapping a picture in the chart of a thoracentesis( when I must do one, eeewwww) to bill w imaging, no one in my shop does anything like this.
There's some certification for Cardiac echo thst a colleague is interested in but it involves a lot of steps, shadowing a cardiologist( good luck with that) and doing like 50 echos and take an exam. I'll pass.


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[CCM-MD]

I don’t bill for these. Mainly because we don’t have a way to store these images on PACS yet. Can’t bill unless you are saving images per CMS. I know for a fact that there are people billing for these at other institutions.

Now that there’s a formal exam and eventually board certification available for critical care echocardiography from the NBE - the same organization that administers the cardiology echo boards - I’m sure there will be more people billing in the future.

 

[Bobblehead]

You likely will need to be credentialed by your hospital to perform and interpret specific imaging studies. That will have to be signed off by the radiology department (turf war) and you may need to store images in whatever manner they are using right now for image storage, documentation etc. I think if you're really interested in this, most likely someone in your ER has already asked this question and you may be able to get a better feeling for your local situation by asking around there. Also there may be questions of whether a CPT code by you as opposed to a radiologist will be reimbursed by payors.

The work around has been to bill for it as additional critical care time performing a (physical) exam with the ultrasound instead of a stethoscope, your hands or other conventional physical exam tools. The problem with that approach is that unless you exceed your first hour of critical care at 75 minutes you're not going generate any additional billing.

 

[jdh71]

Rads and cards have all of this locked up at my shop. I just roll any of it into my time. I'd have to look at the pay schedules and wRVU, but IIRC the best bang for my buck is using time anyway.