Hello all....

When you get a CMV- unit from your supplier (ARC). You need to pay for this product( of course). How do you charge for this CMV- unit at your facility? The CPT code we found is only if you actually do the testing ,which we don't. Any ideas

thanks

jthibs

you can only bill for it if the MD orders it for a specific patient. If you end up giving it to someone else you may have to eat the charge. I use an additional charge bundled with my rbc charge for the specific patient. I bill that patient for the cmv regardless of transfusion (or not).

We periodically get CMV- units from our supplier with our order but if we didn't specifically order the CMV- unit we let them know and they take off the charge. It seems to me you shouldn't have to pay for it if you didn't order it.

We order CMV- units from our supplier when we have patients that require them. We place an additional CMV- charge when those units are transfused to the specific patients, an MD order is required for the CMV- units for the specific patients.

A big problem is that HCPC codes don't match FDA product codes. There might be a HCPC code for 'CMV negative PLTs' , etc. but this is not an FDA recognized product code. The ideal way to bill this is to have your computer system delete the 'basic' product charge (the scannable product code) and bill the CMV negative product charge (HCPC code) if the unit and patient both have CMV negative markers.

A little too complex for me. At our hosptial, we transfuse very few CMV negative units, so we can manually adjust billing for those few patients. (Often there is not an exact match in HCPC code anyway, if Irradiated, leukoreduced, CMV neg. In that case you have to bill some of the fees separately anyway.)

The question of charging for CMV testing, "only if you do the testing", doesn't seem valid. If you are paying for someone else to do this testing, you should be able to charge for it. (When you send specimens to a reference lab and they bill you for it, do you let the patient have the test for free? No... you charge the patient for it.)

Don't you charge for irradiation, even if you don't irradiate the product?