Q&A: Charging for Post-surgery Drug Administration

Q: In an outpatient hospital setting, if a patient goes to the floor post-surgery, and the same drugs are continued on the floor, can we charge for their administration?

A: You have to look at each circumstance. For example, a patient receives continuing, additional pain medication injections because he is experiencing intractable pain after an outpatient laparoscopy procedure.

Even though the patient is in extended recovery, taking longer to recover from that procedure compared to a patient who might be discharged on the same day, those drug administration services on the floor are related to the procedure and could not be reported separately with a CPT® code. They could be separately reportable as a charge with a post-op revenue code, because they do represent a cost, but not with a CPT code.

Editor’s note: Jugna Shah, MPH, and Valerie A. Rinkle, MPA, answered this question during HCPro’s Injections and Infusions: Keys to Successful Documentation and Coding webcast. For more information about Shah’s upcoming injections and infusions workshop, click here.