Ace the CPMA E/M Exam 2026 – Manage Your Success with Confidence!

When a patient is admitted and discharged on the same calendar day in observation or inpatient status, you report two separate services: an admission service code for the start of the stay and a discharge service code for the end of the stay. These two codes capture two distinct moments of the same encounter—the admission and the subsequent discharge—with associated management and instructions. Using only an initial hospital care code would miss the discharge portion, and discharge-only or subsequent hospital care codes wouldn’t adequately reflect the separate admission event. Therefore, the appropriate approach is to code both the admission and discharge services.