How to Tackle Behavioral Health Auditing Without A Breakdown

You sit down and feel your jaw tighten, your pulse quicken, and your shoulders cramp up like you’ve slept on a boulder all night. The project you've been dreading is right in front of you, right there, and there’s no escape because you’ve got a deadline and you’re a professional. You take a deep breath and remind yourself that all of your peers feel exactly the same way when faced with the task to audit behavioral health services. “I’m a warrior,” you whisper, because plenty of expert auditors avoid these services like the plague, but not you. Not today. A few years back CPT changed the codes and guidelines.

The changes allow medical providers to bill for EMs in combination with therapy codes. Non medical providers, such as social workers, are not able to bill EMs and there are specific guidelines on what therapy CPT codes they can bill for. In addition to this change, CPT revised their rule for time-based therapy services. For example, there must be specific elements documented along with the time AND the time can be rounded. This is one of the many concepts that coders struggle with when it comes to behavioral health auditing. BH auditing is very different from any other specialty and that’s why it can cause so much anxiety in even the most outstanding and experienced auditing professionals.

Tune into my upcoming webinar, Taking the Anxiety Out of Behavioral Health Auditing, to learn how to understand what to look for in the diagnostic interview code, use add on code for “interactive complexity,” and report crisis psychotherapy.

Webinar Details Here >>

Questions or Comments?