Standard epidurals lasting up to 60 minutes use items 18216 (in hours) or 18226 (after hours). Longer epidurals also require item 18227 or 18219. These provide for an additional fee for each 15 min after the first 60 minutes. Access Anaesthetics calculates this fee from the times entered on the Operation page. There is currently a problem with Eclipse system that limits this extra time to 75 minutes. Consequently, if your epidural goes for longer than this, you will receive an error during creation of the claim. The error will look something like this ...

 

Could not build the claim due to errors in the following data
. . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
FieldQuantity=7
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For more details > Eclipse Menu > View Log

 

We have notified Medicare about this problem and they are investigating the issue. There is no estimate on when a fix will be available. In the meantime, all claims for epidurals longer than 2h 15min should be sent manually.