Optimize Your Chart

Optimizing charts with comprehensive and accurate details of patient encounters helps justify the level of care provided, ensuring fair reimbursement for the services rendered by emergency physicians.

Critical Care

Track your time and document your total time accurately when you provide critical care services:

• Your time is additive and need not be continuous!
• You can only bill critical once per day per patient

Code	CPT Time	CMS Time
99291	30-74 minutes	30-74 minutes
99292	75-104 minutes (uses CPT mid-point time rule)	104 minutes (30 minutes more than 74 minutes)
99292 x 2	105-134 minutes (uses CPT mid-point time rule)	134 minutes (30 minutes more than 104 minutes)

What this means for your Medicare patients is that you will use:

• 99291 from 30 minutes until 103 minutes
• 99292 from 104 minutes onward

See CPT® and CMS rules for critical care and 2023 PFS Final Rule, page 675.