Starting a TEE program, help please

[DrBrown]

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I am starting a TEE program at my hospital. The situation is this:
The hospital does plenty of hearts, including LVADs and transplants. To date there has never been an Anesthesiologist doing ECHO there. It has been done by the cardiologists (and only on a very few cases) The Anesthesia group and the Cardiac Surgeons want Echo done eventually on every case. I am working on showing the hospital administration both the patient benefit, and economic benefit of doing this. I am cardiac fellowship trained and TEE certified, others in the group are willing to learn. Can anyone who has done this give me some insight on billing, ie monitoring vs. diagnosis, probe placement, what codes you are using, how this is getting reimbursed etc.... Any help is appreciated.

Thanks

 

[Bertelman]

I am starting a TEE program at my hospital. The situation is this:
The hospital does plenty of hearts, including LVADs and transplants. To date there has never been an Anesthesiologist doing ECHO there. It has been done by the cardiologists (and only on a very few cases) The Anesthesia group and the Cardiac Surgeons want Echo done eventually on every case. I am working on showing the hospital administration both the patient benefit, and economic benefit of doing this. I am cardiac fellowship trained and TEE certified, others in the group are willing to learn. Can anyone who has done this give me some insight on billing, ie monitoring vs. diagnosis, probe placement, what codes you are using, how this is getting reimbursed etc.... Any help is appreciated.

Thanks

It sounds like the cardiologists are not very invested in showing up to the OR. They won't get their feelings hurt if you guys take over?

 

[Bertelman]

p.s.- sounds like you are an attending. May want to update your profile. I was wondering how a resident was planning on getting a TEE program started.

 

[DrBrown]

I did update my profile today. Yes I am an attending. The cardiologists want this to happen. It is just more efficient for us to do this. Any help on coding and billling would be appreciated.

 

[proman]

The SCA has information on billing etc. I would recommend hiring either a sonographer or a technician who is familiar with echo billing to man the nuts and bolts of the service. Who is going to pay for the machines (Phillips iE33 if you can get them)? Maintenance contracts are a huge deal and runs in the 10s of thousands of dollars a year. Disposables are another thing to consider. Is the hospital going to pay for this new service (which they should)? The service will be a big-time money-loser no matter how you set it up but it's the right thing for the patients.