Making Sense of Preventive Medicine Coding -- Family Practice Management

www.aafp.org / fpm ■ F A M I L Y P R A C T I C E M A N A G E M E N T ■ 49 Preventive care is a cornerstone of family medicine. Routine visits for patients of all ages are scheduled to promote wellness and disease prevention. These visits can also include additional services, such as vaccinations, screening laboratory services, counseling and even management of medical problems. Understanding how to code and be reimbursed for all of these services can be challenging, especially since third-party payers’ reimbursement policies on preventive services vary. This article explains how to properly code and bill for the standard preventive evaluation and management (E/M) visit, the preventive E/M visit with a problemoriented service, the preventive visit for a Medicare patient and the preventive counseling visit.