OB/GYN Hospitalists – A new sub-specialty that is making a positive impact in OB/GYN Care.
As a coder who has worked in OB/GYN for a lot of years, I have had the unique opportunity to be the coder for a new program specialty at our local hospital. We have implemented a program of OB/GYN Hospitalists into our traditional OB/GYN practice.
OB/GYN Hospitalists are the ER physicians (so to speak) for all things “Girlie”. This type of practice model has an OB/GYN specialist available 24 hrs per day. This practice enables patients to have emergent care for any type of OB/Gyn emergency, when their own physician is unavailable. We traditionally see those patient who
§ Think they may be in labor, which could be at term, or pre-term
§ Are in labor and is precipitously close to delivery
§ Have been in some type of trauma, and need an OB/GYN’s expertise
§ Are experiencing a miscarriage, or GYN emergency such as ovarian torsion
In addition an OB/GYN hospitalist :
§ Can assist and deliver Vaginal births, V-back delivery, Cesarean Delivery,
§ Be a primary or assistant at surgery for emergent or planned OB/GYN serves
§ Provide ancillary testing services such as Fetal Non-Stress Tests, Fetal Ultrasound, and Maternal support for pre-term labor, or complex Antepartum or post-partum conditions.
§ Be an extension of on-call coverage for the patient’s primary care physician who normally over-sees the care of the obstetric patient.
As for coding and billing of these types of physicians, we use all facets of Inpatient, Outpatient Hospital, Emergency and office codes for our Evaluation and Management side of the practice. We routinely bill for CPT procedures including surgery, medicine, and radiology/ultrasound services. These physicians also provide main surgery care for Cesarean Sections, and Trauma care, but also provide care as a surgical assistant to General Surgeons too.
The ultimate goal for our practice model is to provide the utmost care for our pregnant and emergency OB and GYN patients 24/7 in the absence of the patient’s ‘regular OB/GYN physician. We work in tandem with those primary providers.
The 3rd party insurance payers have been very receptive to this new sub-specialty as it really does provide top care, and a great price to the payers. I have had the pleasure to partner with
Rob Olsen, in Seattle Washington and his website: http://obgynhospitalist.com
Feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns you have about billing and coding for this unique specialty! Who know.. it just might be the ‘area’ your practice is looking to add.
HAPPY CODING!
