Family meetings without the patient present

I have ready the article on this and have also received mixed input on who to bill under, when the patient is not present. Do you bill under the patient being discussed when they are not present, or the person that you are in conference with even though they may not be a patient. Is there a reference on this?

many thanks and tgif

Family Therapy Patient Not Present

You would bill the services under the patient being discussed. Medicare has an LCD on psychotherapy. Your patient may not be Medicare but most commercial carriers follow Medicare guidelines.

Good Luck

Meeting w/o beneficiary present

I have the same question. I read this article...

"Medicare does not permit a physician practice to bill for family meetings without the patient present. The physician may not bill Medicare, nor may they bill the family member. It is fairly common for the spouse or child of a patient to ask to see the physician to discuss the patient's care. The meetings can be quite lengthy and involve a lot of physician time. For Medicare, however, unless the patient is present, there is no payment for the service.

You may not bill the family with or without an ABN, because the service is considered bundled, not non-covered"

I finally found a Medicare CMS citation in Chpt 1 (70.1)


http://www.cms.hhs.gov/manuals/downloads/ncd103c1_part1.pdf

If the husband of our patient needed to speak w/ our physician about advice for nursing home arrangements, is this billable to the husband (self pay)? A FL 2 form was completed by our physician. Any input would be appreciated!

copapedia editor please confirm discrepency

to cite...author of article "Family meetings without patient present" was authored by copapedia editor and it states "you can typically" bill the family member who requested the service" and then in the forum discussion thread named Family counseling, copapedia editor states "remember, too that the patient will get the EOB that shows that they visited on a day they didn't hve an appointment.

Please clarify when it is not a medicare pt (as we all know can't be billed) who we should under the pt or the person presenting in place of pt.

Clarification

Sorry guys...I thought you were asking about family psychotherapy; patient not present.

Nicole