Hello and HELP

[Bobbie]

I work in a community blood bank in the accounting department. We are looking to interface our blood bank software with a new accounting package. Since we have never used our blood bank software for accounting purposes, we have many codes and steps that will need to be changed in order to get the data in the BB program ready for the accounting program. One of the biggest concerns is our testing codes. Is anyone using their bb programs for billing adsorption, elution and titration tests. Also are you using one test code for antigen testing or using multiple codes?

Thanks

[kate murphy]

Yes, we use our Sunquest lab computer system to generate charges.

Every test code has an associated Charge code. The Charge code identifies department and sepcific test. This is linged to a CMS code or a CPT code.

The Finance dept keeps the Chargemaster and sets the prices, based on allowable charges.

We do one Charge code for antigen typing - no matter how many antigens. We charge for elutions. Titrations and absorptions are manual billed, as they are not done routinely, and are sometimes complex (both doing it and billing it!)

[krichards]

Kate,

I am also using Sunquest, and am very interested in how you do your antigen typing charging. We currently charge for each sample tested, unit or patient, and for each antigen tested. For some of our patients, this can take several minutes of counting and adding. How does your method work? I would like to continue to capture all possible revenue, but would like to streamline this, if at all possible.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Karen

[D.C.]

We have all our antibody identifications sent to our Community Blood Center. They bill us, we pay them, and then we charge the patient or insurance, etc. My supervisor wants us to break their charges down into specifics so we can get more reimbursement.

The problem I'm running into is that while I have found CPT codes for all the testing, some of those codes have no reimbursement fees listed at all, nor are these same codes listed in the 2008 Clinical Diagnostic Fee Schedule at all; they're just not there! All these codes have to do with elutions, pretreatments, antibody titrations, incubation w/inhibitors, auto-allo-adsorption, etc.

Are prices of these "unusual" tests simply set by each hospital or performing entity?

Is there a list somewhere of transfusion medicine CPT code prices? If anyone knows what I'm talking about, I can provide the CPT codes I'm having troubles with.

Thanks!

Debbie

[Bobbie]

Thanks Kate, our lab has wanted to keep the titration, elution and adsorption tests as manual billing, I doubt we will change that in our bb program. I have linked our tests to the CPT codes on a spreadsheet but have found it of little help with titers so leave that coding to the clients when they receive the test results. Our bb program uses only one antigen code, but with the high cost of some of our reagents, it was questioned if we should be pricing each test.