I am an IBCLC at a children's hospital and we bill for our inpatient
services. On the rare occasion when we see an outpatient (one full time position for a
60 bed NICU plus the rest of the hospital) we also bill. I think we are able
to do this because we are not a delivering hospital so do not have bundled
contracts with the insurance companies. Our reimbursement rate is the same as the
rest of the hospital. What I have had explained to me, simplistically, is
that the insurance company looks at the total bill and has agreed by contract to
pay a percentage. They do not look at each item and determine what they will
or won't pay for and at what percentage. At least, this is the way it was
explained to me by our reimbursement department.
We do not charge for pump use in the hospital. We feel that this is a benefit
to the mother since she will not have to bring her pump in with her. We
struggle to maintain milk supply in our NICU mothers so anything we can do to help
we do.

I would be interested to hear what anyone else thinks about this topic as I
have had my supervisor, who is a dietician and not a LC, ask me for the same
information.
Chris Smith, RN, IBCLC
Columbus Children's Hospital
Columbus, OH

             ***********************************************

To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail
To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest)
To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet
All commands go to [log in to unmask]

The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM)
mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html