This is an administrative question that I'm hoping someone else has had to deal with....  Our hospital provides grossing services for the pathology group associated with this institution.  We have been charging the group for the FTEs spent on the gross bench ( one full time PA, 0.4 FTE tech backup).  The Pathologists now want us to charge per CPT code.  They realize the CPT groupings can require a vastly different gross time (88305 is really bad) but I can't get them to see how much variation there can be in the times for "like" specimens to be grossed.  They have came up with a list of how many minutes each CPT code should take, of course, theirs vary from my best guess. Does anyone else use this type of system for charging?  If so, how is it working?  It seems to me this could be a nightmare and I really don't want the hospital or the pathologists to get a raw deal.  Any suggestions would be appreciated..

Tammy Barnhart, BS, HTL(ASCP)
Anatomic Pathology Supervisor
St. Alexuis Medical Center
Bismarck, ND
tbarnhart@primecare.org