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Billing for imaging reads?


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It is my understanding that orthopedics is one of the few specialties that can bill for reading their own images, at least XRs and maybe MRIs.  Is this correct and are there specific criteria that must be met?

 

I ask, because we (myself and the surgeon) are somewhat of journeyman.  We rotate through two satellite office locations (which is VERY annoying) and these locations use the hospital's imaging system rather that our main orthopedic office system.  Our main orthopedic office has its own system to keep the hospital radiologists out to not have to compete for wRVUs for reading our own images.  Since we are forced to use the hospital's imaging system we have been told that we are unable to bill for our wRVUs for reading our images, because the radiologists are the default reviewers and this "cannot be changed."  Being new to ortho I don't know billing specifics as well as I knew FM, but I would assume that the wRVUs for reading images adds up pretty quick.  Can anyone provide some of the most common XR billing codes so I can look into the RVU for them?

For comparisons sake, my base salary is $120k, with bonus of ~12.50/RVU for anything over ~2,250 (I don't remember the specific bonus numbers, but these are pretty close).  I am trying to quantify at least a bit of how much money may be left on the table by this pretty ridiculous outcome before I approach management to discuss replacing that lost productivity income when I will still be reading these XRs and MRIs myself and developing treatment plans based off my read (especially when the radiologists can take several hours, if not multiple days to read images...).

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