tci General Surgery Coding Alert - 2016 Issue 6

You Be the Coder: Check Reason for FNA and Biopsy Together

Question: Our surgeon performed a fine needle aspiration of a mediastinal mass. During an intraoperative consultation, the pathologist said that the specimen was inadequate due to much contamination with blood cells. For that reason, the surgeon then performed a needle core biopsy of the mass. Can we code for both procedures? California Subscriber Answer: You should be able to code both of these procedures in this case. You didn’t mention that your surgeon used imaging guidance, so the correct code for the fine needle aspiration (FNA) would be 10021 (Fine needle aspiration; without imaging guidance). The code for...

To read the full article, sign in and subscribe to tci General Surgery Coding Alert.


Leverage vital, to-the-point monthly guidance to boost your reporting accuracy and your coding know-how. We make it convenient for your team to stay informed, compliant, and profitable with a subscription to TCI’s General Surgery Coding Alert.

  • Current newsletters added each month
  • Fully searchable archives - over 2100 articles
  • ALL years/issues back to 1999 organized by year and issue
  • Codes mentioned in articles are linked to Code Information pages
  • Code Information pages link back to related articles
Access to this feature is available in the following products:
  • tci General Surgery Coding Alert +Archives

demo
request yours today
subscribe
start today
newsletter
free subscription

Thank you for choosing Find-A-Code, please Sign In to remove ads.