What is "Incident to Billing?"

 Growing out of Medicare policy, the "incident to" rule permits services furnished as an integral part of the physician's professional services in the course of diagnosis or treatment of an injury or illness to be reimbursed at 100% of the physician fee schedule, even if the service is not directly furnished by the physician.

There are some qualifiers, such as: 1) it does not apply to hospital settings, 2) the physician must have seen the patient for the initial appointment and created the treatment plan, and the physician must be onsite at the time of the service.

So what does this have to do with counselors? Some counselors who hold a Temporary or Provisional license want to be able to bill under their supervisor's oversight and signing off. While in some cases this might be possible, the practice varies from state to state ... AND ... insurance company to insurance company. 

The caution here, is that unless you are sure it is possible in your state and with the insurance company being billed ... you could face serious insurance fraud charges and stand to loose your license!

Simple Practice provides some general information for this scenario, but they too caution about first reaching out to the insurance company you would be billing to see if you are eligible to do such a practice.