For the second day running I’ve been proved right.
That is sad. But not for the reasons you may think.
I was at a medical conference recently and one of the speakers – a well established consultant surgeon and an incredibly safe pair of hands – stated during his presentation that a private surgeon could not charge for inpatient care.
He may well be a safe pair of hands but on that point he was wrong.
Very wrong.
It would have been most discourteous of me though to challenge him there and then but later on I did have a word and say he was incorrect. It IS possible to charge for inpatient care.
The code for inpatient care is 20320.
I couldn’t help but suggest to him that the mere fact there was a separate code for inpatient care indicated it could be charged. Obviously it may well depend on the insurance company concerned but in principle, it was possible to charge.
I knew I was right because I’d actually charged for inpatient care for an MHM client a few weeks earlier. And the invoice had been paid.
But he wouldn’t budge.
He was right.
I was wrong.
Skip foreword to October 19th and I received an email from my consultant surgeon friend confirming that I had been right all along and he had been wrong.
A private consultant surgeon MAY charge for inpatient care.
Why is it sad that I had been right?
Because my consultant surgeon friend has been in private practice for well over a decade and he’d NEVER charged for inpatient care.
Whilst it is pleasing he was big enough to admit he had been wrong, its sad because failure to charge for inpatient care probably cost him a lot of money too!
pete@medicalhealthcaremanagement.co.uk
by 
Leave a Reply