Take in some sun, gulp the sea air, spin the roulette wheel and … report an E/M home visit code. Under place-of-service clarifications in the 2019 CPT Professional book, your longed-for vacation site could become a new place of business.
Home visit codes 99341-99350 will have an “expanded definition of sites” in 2019, said Peter Hollmann, M.D., chief medical officer at Brown Medicine and immediate past chair of the AMA’s CPT editorial panel, speaking at the CPT and RBRVS 2019 Annual Symposium in Chicago. That means your home visit services can include stopping in at unlikely places, including a cruise ship, when you report the suite of codes.
Here’s how the 2019 edition of CPT Changes: An Insider’s View describes the update:
“The guidelines in the home services subsection have been revised to expand the definition of home. In addition to a private residence, home may also include temporary lodging or short-term accommodations.”
Under the final 2019 Medicare physician fee schedule, CMS
removed the requirement that providers must detail the medical necessity of a home visit made in lieu of an office visit. In other words, you won’t have to explicitly spell out the reason as to why you’re visiting the patient at home, whether the cause of the visit is due to an infirmity or other factor.
With CPT’s broadened definition, you won’t have to address the medical necessity of visiting a patient in other, home-like places when you report an E/M service.
“Short-term accommodations may include hotels, campgrounds, hostels or cruise ships,” CPT Changes states.
That’s not an exhaustive list but only a set of examples of where a patient may reside on a short-term basis, and where you’re eligible to provide medical care. Maybe you have a patient residing temporarily at a
luxury resort in the Vail Valley. By all means, go forth.