Medical Billing Tips: Coding for Medicare Flu Shots

Medical Billing Tips
Coding for Medicare Flu Shots
Podcast Episode 4

Medical Billing Tips Episode 4 Video Transcript

Hi, my name is Manny Oliverez, Director of Operations at Capture Billing and you medical billers know how to bill flu shots, but what you may not know is that on January 1, 2011, CMS (Medicare) changed the rules. No longer do you bill Medicare patients with 90658 for the flu shot. Now there’s a whole new set of new codes.

So for example, what happens when your Medicare patient comes in for their flu shot: Well no longer are you going to be using 90658, now you have to use Q codes. Q2035, or Q2036. Q2037, Q2036, Q2039; why, why can’t we use these anymore? Because Medicare and the federal government now want to know exactly what it is being injected into the patients arm? These codes are brand specific.

Each one of these Q codes represent a different manufacture of the flu vaccine, so now by reporting the Q codes you’re reporting to Medicare exactly what brand of vaccine you used and gave to the Medicare patient.

Now for more information on this you can do a Google search on CMS, Medicare, Q codes, or go to the CMS website or to your local CMS carrier.

And as always remember a medical practice is a business treat it as such, doing anything else, well that’s just nuts.