UCR 182: Clarifying Split or Shared Visits

 February 9, 2024

Ray, Mark, and Scott discuss questions that came in about split or shared Visits.

Our questions are:

 When our doctors cover hospital patients, we often have Physician Assistants in the hospital rounding on new and follow up patients. Recently there is an Incident-to policy change, but I don’t think that applies to the hospital PAs since hospital charges cannot be billed incident-to. Regardless, what do you think of the following:

1. Are our physicians able to bill for those visits at 100 percent?
2. If yes, could they still bill via supervisory role to the PAs (i.e., the PA see the patient and discuss the patient’s case with the on call physician. The physician then formulates a follow up plan and communicate it directly to the PA without physically seeing the patient)? Or do the physicians have to physically see the patient to be able to bill?
3. Are physicians able to bill for procedures done by the PAs at the hospital?

Thank you so much for your assistance and guidance on this matter.