{"id":8024,"date":"2018-08-02T06:45:09","date_gmt":"2018-08-02T06:45:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.medicalbillersandcoders.com\/blog\/?p=8024"},"modified":"2025-07-07T14:55:42","modified_gmt":"2025-07-07T14:55:42","slug":"how-to-maintain-the-general-surgery-billing-in-ascs-facility","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.medicalbillersandcoders.com\/blog\/how-to-maintain-the-general-surgery-billing-in-ascs-facility\/","title":{"rendered":"How to maintain the general surgery billing in ASC facility?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ambulatory surgical centers<\/a> (ASCs facility) uniquely provide outpatient healthcare to the US population. By providing specialized services outside the hospital setting, ASCs allow patients greater access, a higher level of convenience, and more focused and cost-effective care when undergoing procedures that do not require overnight stays.<\/p>\n

Billing for services performed in an ASC is similar to a hospital, where the physician submits one bill for professional services, and the hospital or ASC submits a separate bill to cover the costs of the facility. In comparison, procedural services performed in the office setting are reimbursed by Medicare and several insurers with an additional site-of-service differential calculated into the payment to cover the physician\u2019s expenses related to staff, equipment, and overhead to provide the service.<\/p>\n

Coding for Ambulatory Surgery Centers is a specialty unto itself. It is a facility service, but Medicare requires ASC\u2019s to send their bills to the professional fee – Part B payers but using the facility fee Part A claim form.<\/p>\n

There is a whole different set of regulations and bundling edits to use for ASCs. Many ASCs use the same codes as the surgeons, but that can be a revenue \u201ckiss of death\u201d and create compliance exposure for every shareholder-or-partner in the ASC.<\/p>\n

The rules of the game are different for ASCs than for surgeons or for hospitals; at times ASCs must follow the rules for doctors, and at other times they must adhere to the hospital\u2019s rules. A simple modifier used incorrectly can deliver a \u201cfatal blow\u201d to an otherwise clean claim for thousands of dollars.<\/p>\n

Many ASCs are partially owned and managed by national ASC development and management companies. We code for quite a few, offering them a consistent level of coding accuracy and responsiveness across all of their locations. Some of their ASCs are located in smaller cities and communities that don\u2019t have deep labor pools for experienced ASC coders. With HIPAA-compliant document management and remote access to electronic medical records, we can code for those ASCs as easily as if we were at the next desk.<\/p>\n

ASC Coding Need<\/strong><\/h2>\n