First, let me apologize for asking such a basic question. I know very little about medical billing and coding, but somehow I have become responsible for overseeing our third party medical billing company. The hospital CEO recently saw some charges for an ortho surgery and wanted to know how they came up with the charges for each CPT code billed.
The response was that billing takes the total OR charges for the procedures only (not including anesthesia, supplies etc), divides it in half, and assigns that half to the first CPT code they are given (I assume this means the primary procedure). The other half gets divided among the remaining procedures. For example:
Total OR Charges: $30,000
23430 billed at $15,000 (First Code)
29824 billed at $3,750
29823 billed at $3,750
29826 billed at $3,750
64415 billed at $3,750
Is this best practice? It seems strange to me. But then again, I don't know anything.