You can bill for the time spent doing procedures in preop in three ways.
If they are billable procedures (regional blocks for pain control etc) you can bill for them separately and then bill for the anesthetic care in the usual manner. Just be sure and add an appropriate modifier to reinforce that these are separate procedures from the anesthetic.
The other two options are for if you want to wrap the procedures into your anesthetic time.
If you are continuously with the patient from the time you start the procedure until you personally take them into the OR and induce them, you bill straight time. Just be sure to document vitals etc at appropriate time intervals to ensure that you can prove that you were continuously with the patient.
Alternately, you can bill for discontinuous time if you place the lines then leave the patient then come back to take them to the OR. If you do this, you need to ensure good documentation of the reason for it and the exact time intervals. I tell our billing department about any additional time requirement and they tack on the additional time to the anesthetic time.
Just be sure that you are not billing for time spent doing an evaluation and setting up an anesthetic plan. These are considered to be part of the base units that you bill.
- pod
