Post Surgery Follow-up Visit in Global Period with new complaint.

If documentation shows the patient came in for followup after a urinary surgery that has a 90 day Global period and it is found the patient is also in respiratory distress, can this be charged for payment?

re: Post Surgery Follow-up Visit in Global Period with new complaint.

Was your provider the surgeon?

If the patient goes to office for a post-appt and if by the end of visit pt was treated for respiratory distress then a modifier 24 - "unrelated evaluation & management by the same physician during a post-operative period" could be used on the e&m code, also make sure the dx is different from the dx used for surgery (in this case respiratory distress and anything else the provider might of found during the visit). Modifier 24 is an informational modifier so I am not sure if your e&m code would get pd anyway.

Hope that helps! :)

re: Post Surgery Follow-up Visit in Global Period with new complaint.

Yes, he is a surgeon and he documented the visit was a post op follow-up. He used the surgery diagnosis as primary and the respiratory distress as secondary diagnosis. So I would think it would be included in the global visit because he spoke to a different specialist about it and sent the patient to them. Am i right?

re: Post Surgery Follow-up Visit in Global Period with new complaint.

What I meant was if your provider performed the pt's surgery.... If so, and he used the surgery dx as primary then the e&m will denied as global. In this case you are right because he did doc the reason for visit as post-op and not due to the resp distress...