Can “physician extenders” such as nurse practitioners, physician assistants, certified nurse midwives, or RNs perform subsequent hospital visits or discharges from the hospital?
“Nonphysician practitioners” such as nurse practitioners, physician assistants, etc. could perform subsequent hospital visits and discharge visits provided these were billed under their own performing provider number. They could not perform the work then bill these services under a physician’s performing provider number as this would be “incident to”, and “incident to” is not allowed in the hospital setting. There are no services that could be performed by a registered nurse (i.e. as an employee of the billing provider) that could be billed to Medicare. Non-physician practitioners (NPP) may perform subsequent hospital and discharge visits as “split/shared” services (i.e. billed under the physician’s provider number) if the NPP visits are medically necessary according to the individual patient’s circumstances and performed and documented independent of the physician’s visit. The physician’s visit must be a separate, medically necessary face-to-face encounter with the patient. The physic
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- Can "physician extenders" such as nurse practitioners, physician assistants, certified nurse midwives, or RNs perform subsequent hospital visits or discharges from the hospital?
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