tci General Surgery Coding Alert - 2007 Issue 8

Stop Undervaluing Excisions: Get the Facts Here

Limiting yourself to superficial excisions will hurt coding accuracy and reimbursementWhen your surgeon performs lesion excisions, don't forget that you may be able to access the musculoskeletal (20000-series) codes, or you could seriously undercut your reimbursement for these procedures. Depth Provides a Guide for Best Excision Code When you report an excision procedure, such as a lipoma (fatty tumor) removal, consider reporting either the codes for benign lesion excision (11400-11471) or the codes for musculoskeletal soft-tissue excision.Your code choice depends on the excision's depth and, just as important, the specificity of the surgeon's documentation, says Jeffrey Weinberg, MD...

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