tci General Surgery Coding Alert - 2015 Issue 9

Reader Questions: Express Halted Surgical Procedure Using Modifier 53

Question: Our surgeon prepped and positioned a patient for repair of a recurrent inguinal hernia. But before administration of anesthesia, the patient complained of chest pain. Cardiac monitoring revealed ST segment changes. The surgeon cancelled the procedure. How should I code this? Virginia Subscriber Answer: Because the surgeon cancelled the procedure before making an incision, you can’t bill for a discontinued procedure. Instead, you’ll need to report an appropriate E/M code for your surgeon’s services If the surgeon had discontinued the procedure after the first incision, you would bill 49520 (Repair recurrent inguinal hernia, any age...

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.