Context
Is the following correct? For item 13706, I was informed by askMBS that two items are generally paid in one day, as long as they are clearly indicated to be separate transfusion episodes – marked Not Duplicate Service and with relevant service text. The example would be a patient who comes into hospital anemic, receives a unit of blood in the morning, then has an upper GI bleed and requires further transfusions in the afternoon. Or someone who is pancytopenic and receives a blood transfusion in the morning, then requires platelets in the afternoon for an emergency procedure. As far as I can tell from the MBS description, the definition should not limit this item to once per day, which is usually clearly indicated in other cases. Medicare used to pay up to 3 or 4 items of 13706 per day but recently they have been rejecting anything beyond 2 items.
