Questions for Dr. Stern
About Your Urgent Care Center
31. A new patient comes in with a laceration, I still bill the E&M visits with a modifier 57, because we are billing a surgery code on the same day, not a modifier 25, unless we did do something other than the laceration. My thought behind this is that we have not seen this patient before and we are looking at his medical picture for the first time. I'm sure it depends on the documentation right? How much the physician did on that visit and if he addressed any other medical condition?
Good to hear from you. My column from JUCM (on this very subject) may be useful: http://www.jucm.com/2007-jan/Coding.pdf. Feel free to contact me with further questions or if any questions are not answered by this column.
