How to charge for pooled CRYO?

[BUGGIE]

We get pooled CRYO from our blood supplier, United Blood Services, as we are unable to relabel onsite pooled products. My question is, how do you charge for it? We have a P code of P9012 for one unit of cryo. Is there a P code for 5, or a CPT code? Our blood suplier doesn't charge to Medicare so they could not help. Any help will be appreciated.

[bmarotto]

We get 5 unit pools of cryo from the Red Cross. We charge P9012 x5 for each pool. We do not charge a pooling charge since we did not perform the pooling.

[bbbirder]

We also charge P9012 x5, but we also charge for pooling. I don't think it matters that we didn't actually do the pooling. We are paying a higher fee for the pooled cryo than for 5 individual ones.

If the supplier performs irradiation, we bill for that (separately from the prodcut code if there is no HCPCS code to match) even though we don't perform the irradiation.

[bmarotto]

We got nabbed by CMS a few years ago over the thawing charge for frozen products so we are a little gun shy. I think we will pose the question to our reimbursement consultant.

[skopti]

We Charge P9012 X number of pooled units. ALso, charge processing fees for pooling

[bmarotto]

Our blood supplier provided this information regarding pre-pooled cryo:

Hospitals may bill pooling CPT code 86965 even if the blood supplier performs the pooling; this is known as billing “under arrangement.â€