I’m hoping someone may be able to shed some light on a billing question I and my boss have.

We admitted a patient on 12/27/17 for Shortness of Breath (R0602), Abnormal Coagulation Profile (R791), Sepsis (A419), Hypokalemia (E786), Essential Hypertension (I10), Thyrotoxicosis (E0590), and a few other dx codes.

The evening of the admission, the provider decided to perform a thoracentesis w/ imaging (32555) with dx codes J90 and J189 to support the procedure.

Our question is: Can we bill both 99222 AND 32555? If so, what modifiers do you use?

I should probably note, we bill for the physician, not the hospital. I looked at a few modifiers and tried billing them, but can’t get anything to go through. I’d like to get this billed properly the first time, especially since this patient has Medicare and they are crazy hard to get corrected!