Reasons Not to Do Medical Collaboration: First of a Series

Pearson Scott Foresman

I don’t get paid.

Well, not really. You can get paid...

Are you on salary? Are you working under fee for service? Are you primary care?

As a primary care provider, by collaborating you are working at a higher level of care and can bill accordingly. Reimbursement for telemedicine and telehealth is rapidly changing. More and more states (see California’s Telehealth 2011 Law) are paying for more and more forms of telemedicine. They see that there is real value in collaboration. Until every payor, everywhere catches up, you can use these codes.

For the requesting provider:

Bill using appropriate E&M codes 99122-99215, as well as the time spent in telemedicine medical collaboration.
Charge a remote facility fee Q3014.

Check and see if the patient’s insurance company needs a prior authorization.

Note pre-authorization information along with the patients insurance plan and an ID number in your collaboration request on iClickCare as a courtesy to your consultant.

Now that we have talked about actual payments. What about your time? How many HOURS a week to you spend playing telephone tag? How many weeks does one call take to complete? Do you ever have any questions after receiving a referral letter? What if you disagree and want to discuss alternatives? Then what? Send the patient out on his hopeless mission again? Call the consultant and start the telephone tag game again? How long does it take you to get the letter in the first place? Could you get through the reimbursement generated chaff for the answer.

You have an EMR or EHR? So you need to initialize the letter, get it scanned, and then search for it among the immunizations, broken arms, visit for anxiety, viral syndrome and rash. Only electronic? Same drill, you just never marked it with a pen first. Store and Forward technology makes this all so much easier.

iClickCare has a reimbursement page that you may wish to review. It shows the previous version of the software. The new iClickCare, reviewed nicely here, makes all this even easier.

Did we mention the patient?