{"id":14423,"date":"2021-10-14T17:23:20","date_gmt":"2021-10-14T17:23:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.medicalbillersandcoders.com\/blog\/?p=14423"},"modified":"2025-10-31T12:18:49","modified_gmt":"2025-10-31T12:18:49","slug":"proposed-changes-to-shared-visit-billing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.medicalbillersandcoders.com\/blog\/proposed-changes-to-shared-visit-billing\/","title":{"rendered":"Proposed Changes to Shared Visit Billing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Basics of Shared Visit<\/span><\/h2>\n

Nurse practitioners (NPs) or physician assistants\/physician associates (PAs) and physicians sometimes \u2018share; patient visits. A shared visit which is also called a split visit is one where both types of clinicians participate in evaluating and managing a patient on a given day. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) defined shared visits in the 1980s and issued rules on how to bill shared visits. <\/span><\/p>\n

At that time and ever since, CMS has held that their rules on billing shared visits have applied only to hospital inpatient visits, hospital outpatient visits, and emergency department visits. A different set of rules applies to shared office visits, the billing for which is known as \u2018incident-to billing. <\/span><\/p>\n

Recently CMS proposes to change how shared visits are billed. If proposed changes are finalized in November, the new rules would go into effect from January 1<\/span>st<\/span>, 2022.<\/span><\/p>\n

Who Spends the Most Time?<\/span><\/h2>\n

Under a proposed rule, CMS would mandate that the clinician who spends the most time with the patient bills the visit. Here is how the proposed rule directs practices and clinicians to make the decision about who should bill a visit:<\/span><\/p>\n