The American Society of Anesthesiologists Relative Value Guide lists the following methods as examples to determine professional charges for billing labor anesthesia services:
- Base units plus time reporting in minutes (insertion through delivery) subject to a reasonable cap.
- Base units plus one unit per hour for neuraxial anesthesia service management plus direct patient contact time, commonly referred to as Face Time.
- Incremental time-based fees (e.g. 0<2 hrs, 2-6 hrs, >6 hrs)
- Single or flat fee
Since practices determine their own method for billing OB anesthesia services, NextGen® Enterprise PM can accommodate commonly used and known methods of billing OB anesthesia services. These include:
- Pain Management epidurals should not be counted against maximum concurrency.
- Billing for labor cases that changed from a planned vaginal delivery to an emergency C-section. This is the only time billing two anesthesia codes on a claim is permitted.
- Some payers recognize only time in attendance with the patient and others time in attendance plus reduced time for management. The system must be able to bill accordingly.
- Practices are permitted to bill for epidural anesthesia as follows:
- 15 minutes per unit for the first hour
- 60 minutes per unit for the remaining time
- Minimum charge is $400.00
