Reader Question: Take the Sting Out of Insect Venom Injections
Question: We are having problems getting reimbursed for allergy injections for stinging-insect venoms. Should we bill the same for these injections as for the other allergy immunotherapy injections?
Colorado Subscriber
Answer: You are facing a common problem for allergy immunotherapy coders, and there is an easy explanation for your predicament. Coding for stinging-insect venom is slightly different from coding for administration of other antigens.
To get allergy injections for insect venoms paid, you need to understand the unique codes for these services. CPT provides separate codes for you to use with insect antigen doses:
Pay attention to the number of stinging insect venoms you're billing to avoid the main problem when reporting these codes. The number of insects and the number of doses are important, which is different from the allergen antigens for which the number of antigens in the vial is not relevant. CPT holds that these codes do not include the antigen's administration.
If an allergist prepares two doses of an antigen containing three stinging insect venoms, report 95147 x 2 and 95117 (Professional services for allergen immunotherapy ...) for the administration. Whether the doses come from the same multiple-dose vial or a series of vials does not matter because the code describes the dose, not the vial.
- Published on 2003-03-01
SuperCoder
